Mouse cursor disappears.

I'm just reporting somethoing curious and asking if anyone else has tried "recording" a visual of their porblem.

"generally" the problem has disappeared for me (but see my ealrier posts on the specifics of my problem), but it still surfaces. I have tried to "capture" the behaviour with Snapz pro on a recorded movie clip for "all" skeptics - and Apple - to see. But lo and behold - the problem completely dispaaears once i invoke Snapz Pro, and, after I shut Snapz pro down there is no (apparent) cursor problem.

SO this morning the anomolous behaviour occurs in Mail. WHile scrolling through my morning emails the cursor flickers in and out of a standartd "cursor insert" icon - just flickers, doesn't completely disappear , just flickers. Aha, I htought, time to try again to use SNapz Pro to see if I can record this. Lo and behold as soon as snapz pro is invoked and recording of the screen begins the cursor goes back to what it should be - an arrow pointer - and functions flawlessly.!!

Go figure??????😮

Maybe others of you with screen capture software (snapz pro? camtasia?) could try this - ie makign a video recording of the problem, post it up on vimeo or youtube for all to see? Or, perhaps like me....you won't be able to becasue "something" happens to "correct" the problem once the video recording software starts?

john

Adding my voice to this issue...

I notice that the problem only occurs when I use an app that has tools that change the cursor. For example, Photoshop and Aperture. In both of these apps, I will be fine for various lengths of time, but suddenly the cursor disappears after I choose any tool that changes the cursor. Nothing short of restarting the computer will bring the cursor back.

This problem only started occurring in the last few weeks.

For what its worth I am having the same issue. Happens in photoshop constantly. In safari occasionally. Mabou is correct in that it appears that when the software is changing the cursor the cursor will disappear.

I am also using cs6 with wacom 5. All software is up to date.

Here's an update on my situation. It appears as though things slightly changed after I updated to 10.8.4, in that now, when the cursor disappears in Photoshop, I no longer have to switch to the finder and then back to PS. Now, if I move down to the bottom of the screen and wait for the dock to pop up, the cursor will return. This lasts less than a minute though, and then I have to do again. Not really any better, just a little different behavior than before.

I am curious if there is any correlation to the flickering some new MacBook Airs are exhibiting when running Photoshop. I doubt it, just thinking in type.

Thanks for your useful and informative response!

Just for comparison I do not use any of those things. I have an almost vanilla mac. I have few third party softwares. I have no mouse, just the wacom 5.

Okay; unsurprisingly Cursorceror, from 2007, is a 32-bit program. I think this is a problem since clicking on the PrefPane always prompts me to restart System Preferences.

I'm playing with Omnidazzle now ( http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnidazzle/ ) which is a little newer and definitely helps my old eyes see the cursor better. If I can get past the hit to my masculinity I might just leave the "glitter" effect turned on 😝

I would add that I do not have and have I have never installed Photoshop.

One thing that does seem to run thru this thread is the fact that we have upped the cursor size in System Preferences: Accesibility: Display?

As you may recall, they changed that between Lion and Mountain Lion. Lion it didn't scale properly...was jaggy. Now it is beautiful to look at, but is contributing to this issue?

I run Firefox and Finder, that's about it for 90% of the time. I might have Skype and Itunes running in the backgroud.

The "disappering cursor" always seems to happen when some flash-based web page (like You Tube) is in the front tab. Moving and clicking in the Finder somewhere, then going back ALWAYS fixes it...but only for a few moments.

Personally, I blame Flash. But, SOMETHING is causing it...and whatever that something is started for me on Mountain Lion.

ANNOYING!

1. Anybody get this using just Safari and Finder?

2. Is Photoshop linked for sure (Adobe...hmm...) or is it just cuz that's such a huge usage by long-time users?

3. Is everybody using the Accesibilty options to bump cursor size in all cases?

4. I'm on a totally "vanilla" 21" iMac...never even used that much...and the behaviour began as of Mountain Lion.

For what it's worth, anyhoo. I guess we can hope it's fixed in Mavericks?

Yes, on my laptop I also really only use finder/ safari/ mail/ itunes and I will occasionally get the missing cursor.

I feel like safari is the culprit because like photoshop its the one thats most often changes the cursor shape (hovering over links etc.)

Doesnt happen often on my laptop though it must be said.

As for my setup, I'm running a MacBook Pro i7 2.66 GHz with 8 gigs of ram. I believe it has the GeForce GT 330M card.

I am not using, and have never turned on any of the accessibility settings, like enlarging the cursor.

As for installed software (outside of the basic Apple stuff) I have Adobe CS5 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, and InDesign. I also have Suitcase Fusion 4, Rapidweaver, and Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 6. The only other thing is my Wacom tablet.

Everything has been updated.

I recently noticed the disappearing cursor happen when I went into full screen mode. Once I hit escape it returned. I almost never use full screen mode since Mointain Lion doesn't support multiple displays in it.

I'm crossing my fingers for Mavericks to fix this issue at this point, since I didn't experience it in Lion or Snow Leopard.

11th_door wrote:

I'm crossing my fingers for Mavericks to fix this issue at this point, since I didn't experience it in Lion or Snow Leopard.

But don't hold your breath. I and others have experienced this fault for over two years, Mountain Lion and Lion.

I, and others, have tried over 25 different suggestions offered in this topic. None has worked for me, and I guess the same applies to others. I have never seen a report that a solution has worked for more than a few days. Apple have been told countless times through their feedback route but no response, let alone a solution. After 2 years it seems that the problem is insoluble and I for one am living with it.

Just wanted to add that I am having this problem as well, seemingly due to Safari. The mouse cursor disappears typically when I work in Safari, and if I quit the app it reappears. Then I launch it again, everything works fine for a while... until it disappears again. Very annoying. Please, Apple, fix this!

After my problem coming and going and now back again.... I have decided that I'm over it all. Just last night, my Macbook just quit again. No ability to click on anything.... dead in the water. So, I shut it down and am making plans to get rid of it. Will I invest in another Macbook... never. Nor will I invest in a PC laptop (my sister's PC last almost 2 years and then she had to buy another). Seems electronics are being designed to quit sooner rather than later.

I decided to take my MacBook in to Apple Care. Just to see how much it would cost. To my surprise, it cost nothing. He called it a courtesty repair/fix. It was the trackpad in my case. My trackpad was replaced and I had to buy a new powercord. My powercord was very hot when plugged in. So I spent $80 total and now I have complete control over my mouse/pointer. I don't know how much this service would have cost if I paid for it.

Perhaps your MacBook quit because of a faulty connection in the power chord. It's interesting that the replacement of the trackpad seemed to fix the mouse. Could you report back in a week to confirm that the fault has gone permanently?