Gary Campbell wrote:
When I woke my MacBook Pro this morning (2019 16", Tahoe 26.3), the cursor had changed to an icon. It's like I dragged and dropped a file, but it never went back to an arrow. I have tried everything, from restarting, resetting PRAM, resetting SMC, starting up in safety mode, force-quitting all apps, and checking all preferences. I even uninstalled apps that I thought might be a culprit. Nothing. The only time the cursor was normal was when I logged in as a guest user, which is not a solution. I'm unable to deduce anything from that other than it must be something in my profile.
What apps exactly do you think interfered ?
Try making some changes to Accessibility>Pointer and compare results as you go...
—A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies
This test will tell you if third party interference; most extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.
—Test issue in another user (or guest user) account Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support
This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.
if no insight or resolve
You can try reinstalling the macOS on top of you reinstall macOS
How to reinstall macOS Recovery (both M1/M2/M3/M4 and Intel) — How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
unplug all non-essential peripherals when testing
Uninstall all third party apps that are Cleaners/Optimizers/VPN/Anti-Virus
all known to cause issues on the macOS
further—
You can get a good look at your User/System config. and reveal conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com
If you need help interpreting the report you can post it here in its entirety in the "Additional Text" box in the editing toolbar below, in your reply.
