GoogleDot Red Cursor

You can use GoogleDot Red Cursor theme, which features a circular red mouse pointer.

First, download the latest GoogleDot-Red.tar.gz from https://github.com/ful1e5/Google_Cursor/releases.

Then, run the following commands to extract and install it.

tar -xvf GoogleDot-Red.tar.gz

mv GoogleDot-* ~/.icons/                      

Finally, change the cursor in settings.

Alternative cursor

Below maybe not what you really want, but it is a good workaround.

Install xcursor-themes package by

sudo apt-get install xcursor-themes

and temporarily switch to some red theme by keyboard shortcut.
Below are the scripts for setting up a keyboard shortcut to change the cursor in MATE DE, you can adapt them for other DEs.

Script for cursor theme toggling:

mkdir ~/bin

cat <<EOF > ~/bin/toggle-pointer.sh

if gsettings get org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-theme | grep -q default

then

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-theme 'oxy-red-argentina'; 

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-size 48;

else

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-theme 'default'; 

    gsettings set org.mate.peripherals-mouse cursor-size 24;

fi

EOF



chmod +x ~/bin/toggle-pointer.sh

Note: if you know cursor theme then replace oxy-red-argentina with known name.

Command to bind the above script to the Super+b (as example) shortcut:

dconf load / <<EOF

[org/mate/desktop/keybindings/custom99]

action='/home/$USER/bin/toggle-pointer.sh'

binding='<Mod4>b'

name='ToggleCursorTheme'

EOF

This will work as follows: