DIY mouse jiggler: 5 ways to build your own

Before you buy a mouse jiggler, plenty of people just build one — a glass, a fan, a $6 microcontroller. Some of these actually work; a couple of the "hacks" you'll find in forums don't do anything close to what people think. Here are the five real methods, how to build each one, and which one is actually worth the ten minutes.

What "DIY mouse jiggler" actually means

A store-bought jiggler is either a small USB dongle that emulates a mouse, or an app that fakes movement in software. A DIY version does the same job with parts you already have or a cheap board you flash yourself — no order, no shipping, no $15–30 spent on a dedicated device. The trade-off is effort: the free methods take two minutes to set up and are unreliable; the reliable methods take twenty minutes and a bit of basic soldering-free electronics.

5 ways people build a mouse jiggler at home

1. The glass or cup trick

Balance your mouse upside down (or on its side) on a rounded glass, drinking cup, or curved surface. The unstable base means tiny vibrations from your desk, a nearby fan, or foot traffic constantly jitter the optical sensor, registering as small amounts of movement. Cost: $0. Setup: 2 minutes. It's popular precisely because it needs nothing — but it's the least reliable method here: it doesn't work at all on a stable, vibration-free desk, and many modern high-DPI laser sensors are precise enough to ignore the jitter entirely.

2. The fan or clock trick

Tape the mouse to something with slow, steady mechanical motion — an oscillating desk fan, the second hand of an analog clock, or a small hobby motor. The repeated nudge keeps registering as movement for as long as the appliance runs. Cost: $0 (if you own the appliance). Setup: 5 minutes. It's more consistent than the glass trick, but it's visible, it's audible, and it stops the moment the fan is switched off or the clock battery dies.

3. Raspberry Pi Pico USB HID script

A Raspberry Pi Pico ($4–10) can be flashed with CircuitPython or MicroPython to identify itself to your computer as a genuine USB mouse, then run a short script that nudges the cursor a pixel in each direction on a timer. Because it's a real HID (human interface device), it works with anything that watches for mouse input — Slack, Teams, any employee-monitoring tool, all of it. Cost: $4–10. Setup: 20–30 minutes (flash the firmware, write or copy a ~15-line script, plug it into a spare USB port). This is the most reliable DIY method on this list.

4. Arduino Leonardo or Micro mouse mover

Same idea as the Pico, using an Arduino board built on the ATmega32u4 chip (Leonardo, Micro, or Pro Micro), which can natively present itself as a USB mouse via the Arduino IDE's built-in Mouse library. Cost: $15–25. Setup: 30–45 minutes, including installing the IDE and uploading a sketch. It's slightly more expensive and fiddlier to set up than the Pico route, but it's a well-trodden path with a lot of existing example code if you'd rather copy a working sketch than write your own.

5. PowerPoint or looping video trick

You'll see this recommended constantly: start a full-screen slideshow or looping video and leave it running, on the theory that "media playback" keeps your PC from going idle. It's worth including because it's so common — but it's the one method here that doesn't actually move your mouse or generate any input at all. It can stop your screen from locking, the same way PowerToys Awake stops your PC sleeping, but Slack's away-timer runs on keyboard and mouse input specifically. If that's the gap you're trying to close, this method does nothing for it.

Which DIY method should you actually use?

What Reddit and forums actually say

The pattern across r/overemployed, the Arduino forum, and Instructables threads on this topic is consistent: the free tricks (glass, cup, rubber band, shoelace-and-weight rigs) work inconsistently and get abandoned fast, while the microcontroller builds get described as "set it and forget it." One frequently-cited Instructables guide, "Keep Your Computer Awake With a Cup," is essentially method #1 above — and the comment sections are full of people reporting it stopped working the moment they switched to a newer, more precise mouse.

The catch with any DIY jiggler

Every method above — free or built — runs on or plugs directly into the machine being watched. That means there's always something local to inspect: a suspiciously regular movement pattern, mouse activity with no matching keystrokes, or in the Pico/Arduino case, a second "mouse" showing up in the USB device list. If that risk matters to you, see our full breakdown of whether mouse jigglers actually work for Slack and how detection works in practice.

The zero-build alternative

None of the five methods above touch the actual problem if what you care about is your Slack status specifically: they're all trying to fake input so an app infers you're active. A cloud presence tool skips the inference entirely and updates your status directly, through Slack's own API, on whatever schedule you set — no cursor, no device, nothing running on your machine at all. That's the whole approach behind Stay Green On Slack.

FAQ

Can your employer detect a mouse jiggler?
Often, yes. Monitoring software looks for unnaturally regular movement, mouse activity with zero keystrokes, or an unrecognized USB device in the system logs — every DIY method here runs on or plugs into the machine being watched, so there's something to inspect.

What can I use instead of a mouse jiggler?
A cloud presence tool that updates your Slack status directly through Slack's API, with nothing installed on your device — no cursor movement, no process, no hardware to notice.

How do I make my mouse move without touching it?
Balance it on a glass so vibration jitters the sensor, tape it to a fan or clock, or flash a Raspberry Pi Pico or Arduino Leonardo/Micro to act as a USB mouse that nudges the cursor on a timer. The microcontroller route is the most reliable.

How do I keep my mouse active while away?
Physically, a jiggler or DIY equivalent that generates real input on a schedule. If the actual goal is your Slack status, it's simpler to skip the mouse and use a tool that updates your status through the platform's API directly.

How to make a makeshift mouse jiggler?
The two zero-cost options are the glass/cup trick and the fan/clock trick. Both are free and quick to set up, but unreliable on modern high-precision sensors and only work while the setup stays in place.