What is the action assigned to the Ctrl key is useful for in Gnome Shell?

Question

I am using GNOME Shell 3.18.5 with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

When I press the Ctrl key orange filled circles are starting to appear at the position of the cursor, getting bigger and bigger and loosing their alpha over time.

Well that is great, but why is it useful?

I have tried to figure it out, but I could not find anything assigned to the Ctrl key in Settings/Keyboard/Shortcuts. (but maybe I was not looking carefully enough)

So why is it useful and how can I remove/edit that shortcut if I want to?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 23 '17 at 18:16

1

It seems to be accessibility feature (see this answer or this).

You can disable it this with

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.mouse locate-pointer false

Or find it in gnome-control-center somewhere in Mouse.

answered Dec 23 '17 at 18:16

N0rbert

99,918

2

Yes the orange circles are so you can find the pointer. – ravery Dec 23 '17 at 18:39

What is the action assigned to the Ctrl key is useful for in Gnome Shell?

1 Answers1