Pixel Fluid

Pixel Fluid is a cursor trail made of real fluid. As the pointer moves it stirs a small simulation: the faster it goes, the wider and stronger each splat, and the colour swirls, flows on and fades the way ink does in water. Instead of a smooth blur the trail is drawn as blocky pixels, as ASCII characters, or as a grid of small crosses, so a hero, a portfolio or a landing page gets a cursor with character.

Five presets come ready from the original: Balanced, Brushing for wide, soft strokes, Fast for a short snappy trail, Neon for a bright pulse, and Vortex for tight swirls. Switch Preset to Custom to set the resolution, how long the motion carries on, how long the colour stays, the force and radius of each splat, how both grow with speed, how closely the trail follows the pointer, the intensity and the pressure solve.

It adapts to the page by itself: on Auto it glows light on a dark background and draws like ink on a light one, reading the colour behind it. Pick the colour and the pixel size; for ASCII choose the characters and the font. It fills its frame, so drop it behind or over one section and set Follow to Inside, or pin it fixed over the page with Follow set to Anywhere. A finger draws the trail too, and the page still scrolls.

Good to know: it runs on the Canvas 2D API, with no WebGL, and sleeps when the trail has faded and while it is off screen. With reduced motion on it stays off. On the canvas it shows a sample stroke so you can style it. Based on the open-source Fluid Pixel Cursor by Nestor Rios Garcia (MIT licence), rebuilt as a Framer component.