In non-limiting examples of the present disclosure, systems, methods and devices for enabling real-time gestures on shared canvases are presented. A shared object service may be associated with a plurality of shared objects. A plurality of user accounts and/or client devices may be granted access to a shared object. Each client device that accesses the shared object may store a distributed data structure locally that corresponds to the shared object. When client devices perform operations associated with the shared object the operations are logged by the shared object service and timestamped. Those operations are then reported to the client devices, where cursor movements can be rendered in real time. If cursor movements and/or user input device operations associated with a cursor meet conditions for a gesture operation the cursor may be transformed to a gesture/animation and rendered on canvases of each connected client device.