XPOINTERBARRIER(1)

📦 version 25.08, in nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable

💅 XPOINTERBARRIER 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to the xpointerbarrier page — it's a General Commands Manual situation, section 1 ofc, and honestly it's giving "tiny tool, huge main character energy." Let's get into it 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

xpointerbarrier top left right bottom | -k [-v]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So what does this thing actually do? It creates four pointer barriers around each XRandR screen — yes, four, one for each side — which, and I cannot stress this enough, effectively jails your mouse pointer to one physical screen. Prison. For your cursor. 💀

And when I say barriers, I mean these are barriers that cannot be passed. Like, at all. So if you wanna get your pointer onto another screen, you need a tool that calls XWarpPointer(3) — that's the whole vibe. Some window managers are sweeties and do this for you already, iykyk. 🧚

xpointerbarrier will also monitor changes to the screen layout and adapt to newly connected screens. New monitor just dropped? It's already on it. Obsessed. ✨

⚠️ big one: xpointerbarrier must remain running for the barriers to stay alive. The literal second the program exits, the barriers disappear. Poof. Gone. So don't be closing it, bestie 😭

The options are as follows:

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • top left right bottom — these four spec the insets of the barriers on each screen, in pixels. You'll usually want to configure this so it lines up with your window decorations when you're using a tiling window manager. Matchy-matchy, slay. 💅
  • -k — you can give this flag instead of specifying the insets explicitly. When you do, xpointerbarrier reads the special property _KATRIA_INSETS from the root window. Fancy, right? katriawm(1) stores precalculated insets right there for you. 👑
  • -v — enables verbose output. super useful. and heads up: it must be the last argument. last. final. no notes. ⭐

🦋 SIGNALS 🦋

When the process receives SIGUSR1, it toggles its "active" state — meaning if there are currently active barriers, they get destroyed; otherwise, barriers get created. On/off. Off/on. A little toggle moment. 🔥

💜 ENVIRONMENT 💜

  • DISPLAY — the X11 display to connect to. that's it, that's the whole env section 🎀

📜 LICENSE 📜

xpointerbarrier is released under the MIT license. See the accompanying LICENSE file for the deets. 📄

🕰️ HISTORY 🕰️

xpointerbarrier was originally written by Peter Hofmann. The project was started in December 2015. vintage. iconic. 🌈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

katriawm(1). that's the one. go read it. 🫶

and that's the page!! this build is from the Debian fam, dated 2025-08-04 — barrier girls, we stay safe and we stay jailed 💖✨🎀

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