Being the coolest parent at school (ish) with a Custom Cursor App

Today I am at my children’s school parent cafe, drinking a green tea and enjoying a lovely blueberry muffin. To lovely I even forgot to take a photo.

This week one of my children asked if he could install an app his friends use at school. It changes the mouse cursor into different funny icons. A harmless little flourish, and the sort of harmless little fun that spreads fast across a classroom.

I said I would check the app first.

Two minutes in and it didn’t feel right, the company recent pr news and the way the software behaved around the rest of the browser (reorganising results based on I guess some ad network). The pattern where a tiny utility quietly monetises access to your device and who knows what else.

Normally I would they say no and hope he didn’t install it anyway as kids would do but because of AI that conversation is now very different.

The build

So today, I built a tiny macOS menu bar app that does exactly the fun cursor and nothing else. It turns a custom cursor on and off. It lets you switch between a few built‑in designs or use your own images. No login, no upload, no account. It keeps permissions tight and the scope narrow. Though did add a bit of self serving advertising with a Sponsored by YALPOP nod.

How it works

Open the app from the menu bar. You see a small panel with the core controls.

• Toggle the custom cursor on. The system cursor is replaced.

• Pick a built‑in design. Simple, clean shapes that read well at cursor size.

• Or add your own image. Drop in a file and the app prepares it for use.

• Toggle off to return to the default macOS cursor.

The first bump in the road was copyright. The request from my son was for a famous anime character. Claude declined to generate or package the copyrighted characters. But we work around these inconveniences and added some cute custom SVG image characters and a clean “import your own image” flow.

So then I packaged it up and share with my son, five minutes later and I was already getting feature requests:

1. Can you add trails

2. Can I get a different cursor for each type so when resize its X and when I move its Y

3. Can it run when my computer starts

Each request answered within 30 minutes and a new app built and shared and then the moment all parents want to hear “can I share this with my friends” 😍

▶ Watch the video on Substack

Why this matters

AI is changing the economics of small utilities. There are whole product categories that exist because building anything used to take a team, a budget, and a quarter. If the useful bit is narrow and specific, a competent person can now create a version that fits like a tailored suit. Not a product for everyone. A tool for this one family, for this one need.

I have argued before that we are heading toward Personalised Software on Demand. This is a simple example of this. Though at this moment the building and deploying of an app is still fiddly and you need a software background but that need is shrinking by the day.