Cursor Park is a decorative area drawn from keyboard characters inside a Google Doc where idle collaborators can leave their mouse cursors instead of hovering over the body text.

Where did Cursor Park come from?

Twitter user @alindeman posted the earliest known cursor park on May 16, 2019, calling it a 'cursor park and nature preserve'.

What does Cursor Park mean?

The term describes a holding area inside a shared Google Doc for cursors belonging to people who are watching the document but not typing in it.

How do you use Cursor Park?

Paste an ASCII block into a shared Doc and ask idle collaborators to drag their named cursors inside the drawn boundary. Pre-made templates are available on coda.io.

Is Cursor Park still popular?

The format peaked in late 2022 after viral TikToks from Lenovo and Google, with the Google clip reaching 11.5 million views.

Cursor Park

2019ASCII art formatclassic

Published October 21, 2026

Cursor Park, also called a Cursor Parking Lot, is a block of ASCII art placed inside a Google Docs page where collaborators can park their mouse cursors when they are not actively editing. Twitter user @alindeman coined the concept in May 2019 with a 'cursor park and nature preserve,' and the idea went viral in July 2021 after a tweet by @ahl drew over 119,000 likes. By late 2022, Lenovo and Google produced TikTok explainers of their own that reached millions of views.

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Overview

The lot is defined by a frame drawn from keyboard characters, usually a rectangle but sometimes a more detailed scene such as a nature preserve, a zoo, a picnic area or a cafe6. On a shared Google Doc every active collaborator shows up as a floating cursor labeled with their initials, so clustering those cursors inside a drawn boundary signals that the editor is idle rather than typing somewhere in the body text3. Elaborate designs are part of the appeal: @jenniferdaniel's ocean-themed version included fish and seaweed, and later variants added benches, trees and numbered parking spaces for individual users2.

TikTok

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Twitter (2019 origin) / TikTok (2022 viral spread)

Creator

@alindeman

Date

2019

On May 16th, 2019, Twitter user @alindeman posted an image labeled 'cursor park and nature preserve,' which showed a boxed-off area at the top of a Google Doc for collaborators to leave their cursors1. The tweet drew replies from others sharing their own designs, including designer @jenniferdaniel, who posted an ocean-themed version and shared a Google Doc full of pre-made templates for anyone to copy and paste2. The original 2019 tweet was later deleted but survives in a Wayback Machine capture1.

How It Spread

Interest in cursor parks spiked on July 29th, 2021, when Twitter user @ahl posted a photo of a parking-lot ASCII block filled with named cursors and the caption 'Always be sure to provide ample parking when presenting a google doc'3. That post collected over 119,000 likes and 16,000 retweets, and a repost to r/BrandNewSentence on August 3rd reached over 23,900 upvotes4. A second spike arrived on October 6th, 2022, when researcher @_inundata shared an image of his own cursor parking lot with the caption 'This has been really helpful in Google docs,' which drew over 103,000 likes5.

TikTok picked the format up next. The official @Lenovo account posted a video about cursor parking lots on October 12th, 2022, that reached 9.5 million views7. The @Google TikTok followed on November 2nd with a cafe-themed lot that passed 11.5 million views8, and TikToker @ochemlover posted a reaction video on December 30th wondering what the point was, which drew 6.6 million views in five days9. A copy-and-paste cursor park template was later published on coda.io for people who wanted to add one to their own Docs10.

Timeline

2019-05-16

Twitter user @alindeman posts the earliest known 'cursor park and nature preserve' on a Google Doc.

2019-05-17

@jenniferdaniel replies with an ocean-themed park and shares a Google Doc of copy-paste templates.

2021-07-29

@ahl's cursor parking lot tweet goes viral, reaching over 119,000 likes.

2021-08-03

Tweet reposted to r/BrandNewSentence, drawing over 23,900 upvotes.

2022-10-06

Researcher @_inundata posts his own cursor parking lot, drawing over 103,000 likes.

2022-10-12

Official @Lenovo TikTok posts a cursor parking lot video that reaches 9.5 million views.

2022-11-02

Official @Google TikTok posts a cafe-themed cursor parking lot video that passes 11.5 million views.

2022-12-30

TikToker @ochemlover posts a reaction video questioning the format that draws 6.6 million views in five days.

How to Use This Meme

Making a cursor park means pasting a block of ASCII art, usually a bordered rectangle, somewhere near the top or bottom of a shared Google Doc6. Collaborators who are not actively editing drag their cursor icons inside the frame so they do not float over live text3. Common conventions include labeling the lot with signage, numbering the spaces, or dressing the design up as a scene such as a cafe, a zoo or a picnic area8.