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Can someone explain why sometimes the color wheel displays instead of the black pointer as a cursor, even though it is function exactly as it should if it were a pointer? There are no other issues other than at times it is the wheel, but still works fine anyway.
MacBook Pro [unibody] 2.53GHz-4GB, Mac OS X (10.5.8), PowerMac G4/500 MHz-1 GB; iBook G4/1.33 GHz-1.5 GB; iMac G5/2 GH
That is what is referred to as the "spinning beach ball of death"...
"Occasional appearances of the beach ball can be expected. Depending on your Mac's current workload, even common tasks may temporarily overtax your Mac's resources, such as its CPU or available RAM. For example, opening complex applications, video encoding, or syncing large files with iTunes® may result in a brief appearance of the SBBOD, especially if other applications are also busy. Nevertheless, the SBBOD can indicate that an application or a system process is frozen, hung, or grossly inefficient."
From here > The Spinning Beach Ball of Death
Try using fewer applications at the same time.
How much free space on the startup disk? Right or control click the MacintoshHD icon. Click Get Info. In the Get Info window you will see Capacity and Available. Make sure there's a minimum of 15% free disk space.
Hi... I don't think you read my post very carefully. I've used Macs for over 15 years and know what a "beach ball" (OS 9 and earlier) or "color wheel" (OS X and later) mean. My question was that it is appearing when there is no hang up or issue and all is working fine. It functions just like a normal cursor/pointer (can click, highlight, enter text, etc.). Was asking what causes this, not what the spinning color wheel normally means.
Was asking what causes this, not what the spinning color wheel normally means.
One in the same.
If you check the link I posted previously, you'll find out what can cause the spinning beach ball.
While that link and article is generally helpful, I knew just about everything and already do everything it mentions. It doesn't mention however what it means when the spinning wheel appears in place of the cursor but functions as a normal pointer without causing any delays or hanging. Most of those tips are how to quit or get out of a jam from a preoccupied CPU or "stuck" situation. Can you find any instance of this being described, appearing when all is still working normally? I didn't see anything about that there.
Sometimes the cursor gets stuck. Switching to another application and back will usually clear it.
Thanks Linc! That was such a simple solution that it was too simple for me to think of. In the past I must've thought it "corrected itself" when in all actuality it was due to me switching apps. I must've been in Safari a long time without switching for it to happen so long (which it has been doing the last couple hours). I'll test that in the future when this happens. A minor glitch, but nevertheless annoying and couldn't figure out what caused it. 🙂
Oops... I guess I spoke too soon. The spinning color wheel is back (with it functioning normally as a pointer) even when I switch out of then back into Safari. It only appears this way in Safari however, the giant CPU and RAM hog! 😐
Greetings Linc. I know it's an old thread but I ran into it today along with your advice to the poster. I have a similar situation. With only one website I repeatedly get the beachball. It affects nothing. It's just there and as soon as I click anywhere on the page it goes away only to return shortly thereafter. I get it two or three times every time I visit the page. Switching to another application doesn't handle it with any duration. It keeps coming back. I have visited many threads such as this one, tried the various cache clearing, turning off auto-form-fill, etc. I know you know what you're doing so I thought I'd run it through you. Thanks. GL
Color wheel (instead of pointer) as functioning cursor
