After upgrading to Debian Jessie and XFCE 4.10, I set the default cursor theme in XFCE main menu – Settings – Mouse and Touchpad – Theme tab.
But this seemed to affect only a few applications.
To consistently set the theme for all applications and the desktop I had to run this:
oliver@debian:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme There are 3 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme). Selection Path Priority Status ------------------------------------------------------------ 0 /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursor.theme 90 auto mode 1 /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/cursor.theme 90 manual mode 2 /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black/cursor.theme 30 manual mode * 3 /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursor.theme 50 manual mode Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number:
Select the desired theme from the listed options and make sure it is the same as the one you selected in the XFCE settings.