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John Asher Author

Level 1

9 points

Cursor disappears after fullscreen video.

After upgrading to Lion, my cursor started disappearing during fullscreen video playback and after I exit in iTunes, as well as VLC. Does it every time. Fullscreen video through Safari does not have this problem. I know the cursor should disappear initially, but when I want to use the popup controls or after I exit it still doesn't come back. I can restore the cursor by entering Mission Control.

Anybody else have this problem? Any fixes?

The video is also glitchy in iTunes Store when I'm watching a movie trailer. The lower left corner of the video is playing in the center of the video window, so I can only see a quarter of the video. Not 100% of the time, and sometimes it fixes itself after a few seconds. I usually enter fullscreen when this happens, which fixes the video position problem, but of course the cursor goes away. When the video ends, it kicks me out to the desktop and I have to swipe to view iTunes.

These problems happen both with the laptop alone and when it's connected to HDTV.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.1), Late 2010 MacBook Air

Posted on Sep 13, 2011 3:09 PM

Top-ranking reply

Canny

Level 1

9 points

Posted on Sep 21, 2011 11:42 AM

You're not alone and, for me at least, this isn't just happening in video applications (though obviously the video preview problem is !) so my guess is it's Lion.

My "solution" so far has been to use CMD+TAB to open the app switcher and then immediately hit CMD+` to switch back to iTunes or whatever I was in when it disappeared. The cursor then reappears.

As for the itunes preview - if you switch it to fullscreen and back it should be fine (at least until you try to preview another show) except of course you run the risk of having your cursor disappear again. Now have to use four keyboard shortcuts to work around something that used to work just fine, not exactly ideal.

After a few deep breaths all you can do is remind yourself that its not a trivial piece of software and hope that it gets fixed soon.

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39 replies

Oct 17, 2012 10:52 AM in response to s.shinnawy

I use the double gesture swipe to, move the screen half way or fully to that other screen thing. Then magically the mouse comes back. Really Apple with their millions should be doing better. PC's have never given me that problem

travin

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2012 2:33 AM in response to John Asher

I have this problem and I'm using OS 10.8.2 on an early 2011 MacBook and the only time I lose the cursor is after playing an iTunes video/podcast on full screen.

The only way I can get the cursor back is to swipe to a different desktop/screen, initiate a hot corner I've set to sleep the screen and then a moment later moving the cursor, bringing the screen alive.

If I go back to fullscreen video/podcast and stop, allowing the player to auto-hide the controls and cursor, I again lose the cursor. This is reproduceable and predictable.

I have not encountered the problem with any other type of video, screen saver, etc. I have all recent updates of all software, including iTunes 11.0.1 (12)

Any fixes yet?

travin

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2012 2:42 AM in response to travin

Other threads on this subject:

Mouse cursor disappears.https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4142250?start=0&tstart=0

royco75

Level 1

0 points

Nov 7, 2013 5:26 AM in response to travin

Same happens for me with latest Mavericks and iTunes versions and I've been having this problem since I bought the Mac about a year ago. Was anyone able to resolve this? Is this still considered to be an Applr bug?

Thanks

Jan 5, 2015 8:35 PM in response to John Asher

I have it happen on two machines that were upgraded to Yosemite. So frustrating.

Apr 16, 2015 11:16 PM in response to John Asher

Have been waiting for this fix for very long time.

tupppi

Level 1

17 points

Apr 19, 2015 4:13 AM in response to travin

I've had the vanishing cursor curse for years, too. I only notice it when streaming video from iview.abc.net.au or sbs.net.au.

I have a late-2013 iMac running 10.10.2 Yosemite and it happens in Safari 8.0.3.

My workaround is to move the cursor as far left as possible and because I have my dock on the left side of the screen, I can see the invisicursor has arrived there by the genie effect on the dock. Then when I move it to the right it reappears, although sometimes not for long. It's really amusing.

Lately I've also noticed that the cursor fails to autohide when the video is playing, so I wonder whether the two problems are associated: is the autohide working after the player window is out of focus but not when it's in focus?

I'm only glad I don't work on videos for a living.

Apple, please give this your attention! It's due for a solution.

Oct 12, 2015 1:08 PM in response to John Asher

I've had these issues since Mountain Lion (maybe Lion, not sure) on several machines, still happens in El Capitan.

Now I'm a software developer and I know all about those annoying bugs you don't want to fix right now even though your customer looses hair over it, but eventually, you need to fix it.

Somebody should deal with this, it's about time.

Nov 28, 2015 5:21 PM in response to John Asher

I have just started experiencing the same problem with a 17" MBP running Yosemite 10.10.5 and iTunes 12.3.1.23. This glitch really impairs one's ability to watch a movie in ITunes. Very frustrating and disappointing.

Cursor disappears after fullscreen video.