How to find mouse tracks?

How to find mouse tracks? - briefly

Enable a pointer‑history option (such as Windows mouse trails or macOS cursor highlighting) or use a utility that records cursor coordinates to a log file. Examine the log to view the recorded mouse path.

How to find mouse tracks? - in detail

To recover a record of cursor activity, employ one of several technical approaches.

On Windows, the system does not retain a native log of mouse motion, but you can capture it in real time with the following tools:

• Microsoft Spy++ – attaches to the message queue of a target window and displays WM_MOUSEMOVE events as they occur.
• AutoHotkey – script MouseGetPos, X, Y inside a loop, writing coordinates and timestamps to a file.
• PowerShell – use [System.Windows.Forms.Cursor]::Position in a timed loop; pipe output to Export-Csv.

Linux provides direct access to input devices through the /dev/input subsystem:

• Read /dev/input/mice or /dev/input/event* with evtest or cat, filtering for REL_X and REL_Y events.
• Use xinput to list devices, then xinput test <id> to display movement events.
• For X11 environments, xev reports MotionNotify events with screen coordinates.

macOS requires user‑level monitoring because the operating system does not expose raw cursor data:

• AppleScript combined with do shell script "cliclick" can poll the cursor position.
• Quartz Event Services (via Swift or Objective-C) allow registration of a global event tap that captures kCGEventMouseMoved events.
• Third‑party utilities such as Mouseposé or MouseTracker log positions to a file.

For forensic analysis, reconstruct mouse activity from indirect sources:

• Examine application logs that record user actions (e.g., text editors, IDEs) for timestamps and cursor coordinates.
• Review screen‑recording files; extract frames and compute movement vectors using image‑processing scripts (OpenCV).
• Analyze system event logs for device‑connect and power‑state changes that may correlate with user sessions.

Programmatic capture across platforms can be unified with cross‑platform libraries:

• SDL2 – SDL_GetMouseState returns current coordinates; embed in a loop for continuous logging.
• Qt – QCursor::pos() provides global position; connect to QMouseEvent signals for event‑driven recording.
• Python – pynput.mouse.Listener records movement callbacks; store data with datetime.now() for precise timing.

When implementing any of these methods, ensure:

1. The monitoring process runs with sufficient privileges to access input devices.
2. Output files are written in a structured format (CSV, JSON) to facilitate later analysis.
3. Timestamp resolution matches the required forensic granularity (typically millisecond precision).

By selecting the appropriate toolset for the operating system and desired level of detail, you can obtain a comprehensive trace of cursor movement.