POINTER BREAK

Pointer Break

A skatepark that lives above your windows. Exhaust smoke behind your cursor, and a skateboard that launches off ramps, grinds rails, and stays wherever it lands until you go and collect it.

Download on the Mac App Store MACOS 14+ · NO PERMISSIONS

gameplay.mp4
The skatepark drawn over a spreadsheet: ramps, rails and a halfpipe across the window, with the board trailing smoke.
The board mid-flip in the air with a trail of exhaust smoke behind it and the trick name 360 Shove-it fading above, drawn over a spreadsheet.
swing air → 360 shove-it
The board carving up the curved transition of a halfpipe, smoke trailing along the flat, drawn over a spreadsheet and the Dock.
halfpipe line
The menu bar item open over a spreadsheet, listing Smoke, Skateboard, Show Ramps, Show Rails and the rest, with the Tuning submenu of sliders beside it.
menu bar + tuning

SMOKE

Exhaust behind the cursor

Emitted by distance travelled, so the trail looks the same at 60 and 120 Hz. Slow deliberate movement stays completely clean.

RAMPS

Quarter-pipes you launch off

Cross the lip with enough speed and roughly the right heading and the board leaves on its own, exit direction taken from the lip tangent.

RAILS

Grinds, catchable out of the air

Which is what makes ramp → air → grind → pop chain on its own. A landing from a wide angle grinds slowly rather than at full pace.

HALFPIPES

Pump, stall, air out

Parametrised by arc length with gravity resolved onto the local tangent, so all three are one equation. A line runs for a few airs, then settles.

SWING AIRS

No furniture needed

Reverse the cursor at the top of a swing and the board pops off and tricks. The halfpipe is wherever you happen to be drawing it.

It costs nothing when you’re not moving the mouse.

SYSTEM
macOS 14 or later
PERMISSIONS
none of any kind
INJECTION INTO OTHER APPS
none
IDLE COST
10 Hz poll, display link parked
PRICE
free download, £4.99 one-time unlock
START AT LOGIN
optional, in the menu

The download is free and stays free: the board, the smoke, the tricks and the default layout, with no time limit and no nagging. A single payment of £4.99 unlocks the layout editor and the score — once, not a subscription. The App Store shows the price in your own currency.

Get it on the Mac App Store

Quit from the menu bar item, or pkill -x PointerBreak.

Known rough edges

Space between displays

The walls are the edges of your displays, so a board bounces off the gaps between them rather than resting somewhere nothing draws. Two displays that meet only at a corner are not joined.

The real cursor always draws on top

The WindowServer composites it above every window, so the board sits under the arrow. Hiding the system cursor would pull in the Accessibility permission.

Some places nothing draws

The login window, Fast User Switching and secure input fields. Expected, and not fixable.

Start at Login needs approval

A mixed tick in the menu means macOS is waiting on you; clicking it opens System Settings.