After updating to Lion my mouse pointer will sometimes disappear on my second monitor. If I move it back to my primary monitor is will return. Doesn't happen with any regular occurrence, seems pretty random. Thoughts?
Quad G5 paper weight, 2009 Mac Mini,, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Original iPhone 8GB, 16g iPhone 4, iPod touch 4 and iPad ][
******************** I HAVE SOLVED THIS PROBLEM (at least for me) ********************
Ok so I literally just "fixed" it accidentally while working on another tip from another thread.
Going into System Preferences --> Accessibility --> Display, I increased the "Cursor size" and tada! Now it shows up on all screens.
Interestingly/bizarrely, playing around with this feature, it only worked once the Cursor size got about 2/3 between "Normal" and the first tick to the right. Any smaller and it disappears again. This seems strangely arbitrary and I can't figure out why this works. I would think maybe it has something to do with relative resolutions of the monitors but that wouldn't explain why it displays fine on the second, mirrored, monitor.
Hope this helps someone else!
I have 3 monitors (23", 27" mini display and a 30" ) on my mac pro 12 core and the same happen randomly, on any given one of the monitors, at any time. I hate it and there seem to be no fix. However a quick way to get back you mouse is to "COMMAND TAB" to another app and tab back to your previous app. This will bring back the mouse but its not a fixe. COME ON APPLE TIME TO HEAR US!!!!!!
REMOVE the FLASH Plug IN from the Plugins folder.
REMOVE the SHOCKWAVE plug in from the Plugins folder
the New Frirefox and Flash seem to work but try the removal then trash preferences...close Firefox and relaunch or reboot
I originally posted on this a year ago (Aug 23, 2011 10:49 AM) and have been recieving replies ever since, all showing absolutely zero progress from Apple to fix this.
Looks like they were saving whatever the fix was for 10.8 ML because it now seems to work just fine.
Can't help feeling like I just purchased a service pack rather than a new o/s though.... Maybe thats why it was 1/3 cheaper than Lion?
Anyone else seeing an improvement with 10.8?
It is absolutely astounding that this bug still exists. I'm sitting here using Microsoft Word on my external monitor and I have no mouse cursor! It's always been this way and happens 100% of the time.
How hard could this be to fix? Get on it guys!
I think I've cracked it!
This issue is due to Google updater, which comes with Google software like Google Chrome. I know it sounds unlikely, I thought so too, especially as I use Firefox as my main browsers. Please bear with me.
I was also having a separate issue with my MBA where it would freeze, others in my office has kernel panics. I got sick of this so I looked at the system logs, the first two times I did this I didn't see anything strange. Then the last time I noticed that Google Updater was mentioned before the freeze occurred, just like the last two crashes. I removed Google Update manually. This removed the ability for Google Chrome to update itself, so I has to do a full reinstall of Google Chrome (removing preferences etc. manually too).
It's now been over a week, with no crashes or freezes. And amazing thing is the mouse pointer hasn't disappeared either. I shared this with a number of people in my office that were having kernel panics and freezes on their MBA's too. It seems to have resolved their issues too.
I shared the unlikely story with a college and he sent me this article about the Chrome team admitting that Chrome can cause some issues.
If it the issue effect the Google updater, it may not be able to patch itself, requiring a full reinstall (of the Google Updater) not Google Chrome. I think the problem couldn't be fixed by a simple update or a simple reinstall, it required a full manual reinstall, that requires sudo privileges.
To fix:
- Manually remove Google Updater
- Then to make Google Chrome update fully functional again do a full reinstall of Google Chrome (removing preferences etc. manually too).
The Article user seaniebyrne mentions is related to particular MacBook Air Laptops.
My Cursor dissappears when I Have a firefox widow with a maximized flash streaming video running on a 24 inch Dell and attempt to use my cursor on the 30" dell and/or two other 18" Dells. I run 4 monitors off 4 seperate video cards on a 8-Core MacPro 2009 Running Lion 10.7.5. I have to click out of firefox and often have to click the desktop(finder) to see the cursor.
If I run the streaming video without selecting fullscreen the video runs in the firefox window and I don't lose my cursor. This happens 100% of the time
I get this with an iMac 24" 2007 version, after I upgraded to Snow Leopard. I get when I launch certain apps in VMware fusion. I don't think it's down to the OS or the hardware. I'll try the google updater advice though...
I work in a design office and myself and another designer are suffering from this problem.
Reading through the posts this is seemingly total random, for us it only happens when using photoshop with the main cursor randomly disapears on our principal screen. We dont have Crhome installed and from reading the post I see different theries as why this is happeninh, but sadly not many are common. I was intially lead here from the Adobe forum as I thought it was a photoshop issue but now Im not so sure ?
We both have 2 monitors set up, myself 2 apple monitors and my collegue a Lacie and some random moniotr that I cant remember now. We're both using G5 towers with 10.7.5 and adobe creative suite 5 installed, only happens when using photoshop, thats to say we use illsutrator every day and it never happens there.
I install the photoshop CS6 beta a while back and had the same issue, I have since uninstalled it.
On a side note, for us at least, to get the cusor back we just have to click randomly on the second screen making sure to leave photoshop (so basically clikc on the desktop of the second screen) and then click back into photoshop.
Would be really interested to hear from more 10.8 ML users on this to see if anyone had the problem resolved that way, we can easily upgrade if needs be but it's not really worth it if the problem hasnt been fixed.
I updated to ML two weeks ago and have not seen the problem. I am pretty happy with ML, it has fixed a majority of the issues I was having relating to using two screens. I updated by installing over Lion, I didn't do a clean install. Keeping fingers crossed and will report back if it shows up again.
I was checking the Adobe forums regarding this issue and photoshop, the majority of people over there seem to say that the problem persists with, or even was started by installing Mountain Lion so if the issue has resolved itself for you then count yourself as one of the luck ones.
Please post to see if the problem comes back or if it indeed stays away.
I've had the disappearing mouse thing happen here and there under ML. Currently I can reproduce it 100% of the time by opening a window in Firefox on my second monitor, starting a youtube video and setting the video to show full frame. At that point if I move the mouse to my main monitor there will be no cursor. If I bring the cursor to the to of the window and click on a menu item in Firefox the cursor may return temporarily but when I start typing it disappears until I move the cursor. If the cursor move over to the other window the cursor disappears. It will not return until I go through the same routine. I began to notice this with regularity after visiting System Prefs and going to Accessibility and playing with the size of the mouse. I can't say that started it because I did notice it a -bit- previously but now I have discovered a way to induce the problem repeatably.
…since we have upgraded to mountain lion we are experiencing the same problems in our agency! Disappearing Cursors in Adobe Photoshop 5 and 6 while using Wacom Intuos 4 and 5 Tablets. The Cursors even disappear by using a regular mouse!!!
Systems: MAC PROs Quad-Core Intel Xeon / 12 GB RAM / Mac OS X Version 10.8.2
Working that way is almost impossible! WE NEED A FIX SOON!!!
Same problem, just upgraded from 10.6 to 10.7 and my cursor dissapears when going from one screen to the other. Same CS6 with both 10.6 and 10.7, but in 10.6 had no problems at all. Irritating working like this. As someone said I see no replies from Apple here. What´s going on! This is stupid and non professional, the problem keeps happening since last year!!! Nothing to say?
I'm still running Snow Leopard, 27"iMac with all the bells and whistles. This just started today, and only on Firefox. I updated Flash and Shockwave yesterday in my plugins -- I'm going to try to get to them without a mouse and remove 'em. So I'm thinking this is Firefox, not the OS.
I don't have an extra monitor and I just started having this issue. I'm on a MacBook Pro that's 3 years old now. I had to do what I used to call the "ol' Bill Gates reset," (reboot) to fix it.
This will not be a workable solution if this becomes an ongoing problem.
Mouse pointer disappears on second monitor.
