Mouse cursor disappears.

I have had intermittent disappearances of my mouse cursor as well on my iMac from when it ran Lion to Mt. Lion for years.

I too have tried everything.

It has happened frequently when using Adobe applications.

I have recently had to set my display size to 'the best for the built in display', instead of scaling it to a lower resolution, to accommodate major unresolved issues with several 'Blizzard' games I play. This has made everything from the cursor to the system text very small and hard to see.

Using System Preferences ->Display -> Cursor Size, I enlarged my cursor.

The mouse now disappears constantly when moving over pages in Safari, and between any app.

You can see that it is functional, as hot spots will change when hovered over.

The only way to get the cursor back is for me to move the cursor to where I believe the desktop is, then click, and it re-appears. If I hover it over the current home page at Apple.com, it will disapear after it has activated a hot spot, and reappear as the defulat 'hand' when moved over an image hot spot.

When I reset the size to the smallest, at least Safari works again, until I start switching between apps.

Clearly, the only rational solution is to have the cursor always be the little arrow that dates all the way back to the first Mac. No more hands or crosshairs. Deal with it.

Having just read that installing Mavericks has resolved the mouse issue for one reader, I decided to reply.

I have had intermittent disappearances of my mouse cursor as well on my iMac from when it ran Lion to Mt. Lion for years.

Upgrading to Mt. Lion didn't fix the problem, but did cause a lot of issues with my Adobe applications at the time, forcing me to upgrade them from CS5 to CS6 due to numerous incompatibility issues.

Upgrading to Mavericks is not an option I want to try despite the thousands of one and two word reviews on the App Store such as 'Great!', or "Best OSX Ever!", for two reasons:

1: A recent attempt to just synch my iPad running IOS6, either with the 'Cloud' or with my iMac failed. Despite contacting Apple Support, and several hours of work, the results were a forced upgrade to IOS7 on the iPad and a total loss of it's data, despite backups still residing on my iMac, and a backup that was on the 'Cloud' just before the forced OS update. The techs told me they have no record of a backup to the 'Cloud'. Not good.

2: After seeing the IOS7 features, I don't like the cosmetic changes, nor will I have a use for many of the 'improvements'.

But I digress.

The mouse cursor still, and always has disappeared since I've owned my iMac.

I too have tried everything.

It has happened frequently when using Adobe applications, which I update constantly.

I have recently had to set my display size to 'the best for the built in display', instead of scaling it to a lower resolution, to accommodate major unresolved issues with several 'Blizzard' games I play. This has made everything from the cursor to the system text very small and hard to see.

Using System Preferences ->Display -> Cursor Size, I enlarged my cursor. Unfortunately there is no way to enlarge system text without messing with things you shouldn't have to.

The mouse now disappears constantly when moving over pages in Safari and between any app.

You can see that it is functional, as hot spots will change when hovered over.

The only way to get the cursor back is for me to move the cursor to where I believe the desktop is, then click, and it re-appears. If I hover it over the current home page at Apple.com, it will disappear after it has activated a hot spot, and reappear as the default 'hand' when moved over an image hot spot.

When I reset the size to the smallest, at least Safari works again, until I start switching between apps.

Life goes on and we now have colored iPhones available that will be obsolete and in land fills within two years. Woohoo!

Too late now, but try Phoneview for making independent backups of your iPad or iPhone (not relying on iCloud).

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/

Also Calendar and Address Book have their own archiving functions (e.g. File/Export/Calendar Archive)

Back on topic - the cursor problem...

If you use a trackpad, for a quick way to make the cursor reappear try the three finger swipe left then right (to switch between Spaces and back). I haven't had the vanishing cursor problem for months but used to use this technique. (BTW - has anyone tried changing some of the settings in Mission Control to see if this affects the cursor problem?)

Firefox seemed to have less problems than Safari. Some of us wondered if it was related to Adobe Flash/Shockwave but I don't think that was ever resolved.

Mavericks is actually better than Lion and Mountain Lion and, in my view, is worth trying as it could fix your cursor problem. Cosmetically it looks the same and all my iCloud services have been working well. I have listed some minor problems here:

http://users.tpg.com.au/aoaug/mac_osx.html#mavericks

I just had this issue on my brand new MBP Retina 15 (with Maverick obviously).

The problem seems to be a conflict with my USB hub. If I unplug the hub, an otherwise wonderful Anker uspeed usb3, all goes back to normal. When I plug it back in, the cursor start disappearing in certain apps like Chrome.

G

I have only had this problem since installing Mavericks! Pressing 'escape' did seem to resolve it, but is not ideal.

Same here. I never had a problem with the mouse cursor until I installed Mavericks. Now I do.

Same problem.

Had this issue with Lion and now after 2 weeks the issue appears also in Mavericks.

derdado wrote:

Same problem.

Had this issue with Lion and now after 2 weeks the issue appears also in Mavericks.

Mountain Lion also. (Sigh!) If you have a Trackpad (to allow you to move the pointer), try this: open System Preferences > Mouse. Click on the button "Setup Bluetooth Mouse", then on "Done". This works for me every time. For convenience, drag the window to the edge with just the "Setup ..." button showing. When pressing "Done" the window slides back again.

If no Trackpad, some people have luck with CMND+OPTION (which hides the Dock). Do it again and the Dock re-appears, and with luck the mouse cursor also.

My disappearing mouse cursor issue has finally appear to have resolved itself. I thought it may be as a result of Mavericks, but I got to thinking that it may actually be from something else. My hard drive recently died and instead of restoring from a backup I ended up reinstalling the OS and restoring a partial backup.

Interestingly enough with my new hard drive/install I haven't installed Xcode. I always assumed there was a problem with Adobe, Flash or Java but so far with Mavericks everyhting has been cool. The only thing I can think that is different is the lack of Xcode.

I have Xcode installed, as well. Can anyone confirm that they are experiencing the disappearing cursor and do not have Xcode installed?

I have Xcode (and do have the mouse problem).

I have read that Xcode is used for developing software for the Mac. I don't have any use for it so I would like to uninstall it.

http://macdevelopertips.com/xcode/how-to-uninstall-xcode.html

advises running the following in Terminal

sudo <Xcode>/Library/uninstall-devtools --mode=all

but I get "no such file".

How can I uninstall Xcode?

You should just be able to drag the app "Xcode.app" located in the Applications folder to the Trash. If that doesn't work, try AppZapper.

I do not have Xcode installed and I do have a disappearing cursor - so far only when Adobe Flash is active.

I searched for Xcode and never found it. Along with the error message I got from Terminal it seems that I never had it. That puts me in the category ofhaving the mouse problem and not having Xcode.