Eight cursor effects you can try first, and a pony for every Terminal

PonyMux 0.12, a terminal multiplexer, adds four new cursor effects — Comet, Sparks, Afterimage, and Lightning — bringing the total to eight, and ships six selectable ponies (Mochi, Nyx, Opal, Pixel, Rex, and Mocha) so each Claude Code, Codex, or Grok session can have its own pet. Settings now previews effects in a live terminal using the same engine as real Terminals, and the release moves several small waits off the main thread.

Most of a day at the terminal is the same keys again and again: j , k , w , $ , G . The work matters. The keystrokes don't feel like much. I wanted them to feel a little like casting a spell, where every jump leaves a spark behind. PonyMux 0.12 adds four new cursor effects, eight in all, and Settings now plays the one you select in a live terminal before you pick it. Six ponies also ship with the app now, so each Claude Code, Codex, or Grok session gets its own pet without installing anything else. Cursor Lightning in PonyMux: a bolt from where the cursor was to where it lands. Comet, Sparks, Afterimage, and Lightning join Warp, Tail, Sweep, and Ripple. I wrote the four new ones to look different from each other, not as four takes on the same smear: All of them skip short moves, so typing doesn't set them off. Ripple, Comet, Sparks, and Lightning are now drawn in your theme's accent color, so they fit whatever theme you use. Every jump can leave a little magic behind. Open Settings → Terminal → Screen Effect and click an effect. Under the list is a real terminal, not a recording: same engine as your Terminals, with your font, cursor, and theme. It types a few lines of code and jumps around them the way vim does, $ , % , G , w , so you see the effect on the moves you actually make. Ripple only reacts when the cursor changes shape, so for Ripple the preview switches between insert and normal mode instead. That's also why Ripple got bigger and longer in this release: it used to be a faint gray ring that was easy to miss on dark themes. If Reduce Motion is on, the preview waits for you to press play. The setting is the default for new Terminals. Each Terminal can still have its own effect from its action menu. Until now PonyMux shipped one pet, Mochi. Without ChatGPT or your own pets in ~/.codex/pets/ , every Terminal got Mochi, and a row of identical ponies over the window doesn't tell you which session is which. Now there are six: Mochi, Nyx, Opal, Pixel, Rex, and Mocha. New Terminals pick one at random, or the one you choose in Settings → General → Pets . Settings → General → Pets in PonyMux 0.12: pick one of six ponies for new Terminals, or Random. A lot of small waits moved off the main thread, so the window doesn't pause on them: Reopening a Markdown file now picks up images that changed on disk, and VoiceOver reads the name of every switch in Settings. Repetitive work doesn't have to feel repetitive. A bit of play in every move goes a long way. For every effect and pet setting, see Personalize PonyMux https://ponymux.com/docs/personalize . Originally published on ponymux.com https://ponymux.com/blog/cursor-effects-and-six-ponies , where the demos are interactive.