Create your own cursor for Java application

You can create cursor for your application using setCursor(Cursor) method of Component class. You can use some built in variables (HAND_CURSOR, TEXT_CURSOR, MOVE_CURSOR etc.) to create the Cursor object. But to create a customized cursor you need to write few lines of Java code. Suppose you have an image file named myCursorImage.gif and you want this image to be used as the cursor of your application- just create the following classes.

import java.awt.Cursor;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.Point;
import java.awt.Toolkit;

public class MyCursor {
    public static Cursor getMyCursor(String imageFileName) {
        Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
        Image image = toolkit.getImage(imageFileName);
        Point hotspot = new Point(0, 0);
        Cursor myCursor = toolkit.createCustomCursor(image, hotspot, "My Cursor");
        return myCursor;
    }
}

Now you can use the method getMyCursor(String) of this class to create your customized cursor where you can use your own image (gif, jpg or png). A testing program is also written for you. You must put all the class files and the image file in the same directory to run the following code.

import java.awt.Container;
import java.awt.FlowLayout;

import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JTextField;

public class CursorTest extends JFrame {
    public CursorTest() {
        Container c = getContentPane();
        c.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
        c.add(new JTextField(15));
        c.add(new JButton("Click"));

        setCursor(MyCursor.getMyCursor("myCursorImage.gif"));
        setBounds(100, 100, 200, 200);
        setVisible(true);
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        CursorTest ct = new CursorTest();
    }
}

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