Mouse cursor disappears.

Not only does my mouse cursor disappear, but occasionally it will just dart across the screen by itself. Has anyone else ever had this happen? It seems to happen most when I am playing a game or streaming content.

I have had these issues since 2010 or so (it's a mid 2009 Macbook Pro), and I've tried everything (updating Java, changing zoom settings, etc).

I have had these faults since my new iMac in the Summer of 2011, and they continue. I have tried lots of solutions suggested. Three sessions with Apple Gurus. No result. I just grin and bear it as part of the Apple Experience. They have never recognised the faults, let alone fixed them. However, since Yosemite was installed about three weeks ago I have had only three incidents, all involving the mouse pointer or cursor disconnecting, and each time it re-connected automatically after about 5 second. Previously I had about 6 per day requiring manual reconnection, your two and others as well. It's too early to relax. The faults might recur after the OS gets into its usual tangle over time.

Hi, my cursor disappear when I use the color picker, I have used your solution and works for me.

Before, I had created a new user account and problem resolved, but it happen again when I install a new update, maybe was that I have been touching the Zoom preferences and causing the problem again.

Thank You!

Third party software conflict.

Hi CT - I'd like to provide some information that I think might be helpful regarding the idea that it is a third party software conflict.

I owned a mid-2012 MacBook Air that I recently sold to a family friend. I too experienced the disappearing cursor issue during my ownership of that computer. Before I sold it, I reformatted the SSD and fresh-installed Mavericks using the recovery partition.

The new owner just reported that she has experienced the disappearing cursor issue. As I helped walk her through setup, and asked her just now to verify the third-party software in her Applications list, I can confirm she has only the following third-party software installed:

Epson Event Manager (printer software)

Microsoft Office 2011 (Excel and Word only, along with standard files installed with Office 2011)

I had Office 2011 installed during my ownership, but not the Epson software, so this instance of disappearing cursor is almost certainly not caused by the Epson software. Note that the new owner does not have anything from Adobe installed on the machine, not even Flash Player.

Based on this experience I am skeptical that it is a third-party issue, but maybe it would be helpful if new replies in this thread could confirm whether or not they have Office 2011 installed on their machine?

Can't confirm.

I'm not sure what you mean. Haven't you been suggesting that the disappearing cursor issue is caused by third-party software? If you are correct, in my case the culprit almost has to be Office 2011.

If other commenters could indicate whether they have Office 2011, it might help determine if that software could be the source of the problem. The bigger issue at hand is whether it is a third-party software issue at all. I mentioned that I'm skeptical. Do you have any information to support that notion?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comments.

Reinfeldx wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean. Haven't you been suggesting that the disappearing cursor issue is caused by third-party software? If you are correct, in my case the culprit almost has to be Office 2011.

If other commenters could indicate whether they have Office 2011, it might help determine if that software could be the source of the problem. The bigger issue at hand is whether it is a third-party software issue at all. I mentioned that I'm skeptical. Do you have any information to support that notion?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comments.

I have Microsoft Office 2011, and installed it on this iMac when it was new in 2011. Ever since I have had very severe mouse problems (although since Yosemite they have much reduced in range and frequency). I have never had dodgy software (unless you can count Office !.) Therefore, (other) third party software seems not to be the cause.

Interesting!

Anyone else?

Same thing here.

But only on my girlfriend's useraccount. I have no problem whatsoever on my account...

I have OSX Yosemite on a new mac mini. I didn't have the problem until i installed MS office 2012 (current mac version of MS office 365). Then I removed MS office and installed LibreOffice and OpenOffice to try them as an alternative. Now I frequently experience my mouse cursor disappearing while using multiple google chrome windows (5 windows, 13 tabs this time) while using libreoffice and doing research. When i get a chance I'm going to contact support to see if they can check my system for errors. The removal process of MS Office from a Mac is "extra" and may have caused additional issues on my machine.

above post should say office 2011, you may want to try to repair disk permissions. It is explained in last part of this video that walks you through removing ms office 2011, if you are not trying to get ms office 2011 off your mac, skip to the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciI8Ef7jTEU

another link if your issue is related to ms office and you want office removed

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2398768

I have not had the problem since repairing disk permissions. Im not sure if it solved the problem, but with the same work flow that frequently reproduced the problem before, the problem has not reoccured. Using LibreOffice.

My culprit appears to be Adobe Bridge.

I am using a Mac Mini with 2 screens and Yosemite. I use bridge for viewing hundreds of photos on a second screen. Mouse kept disappearing so I logged in as guest user. Mouse didn't disappear. Logged back in to my account, mouse disappeared. Then started to close my apps one by one. Mouse kept hiding until i closed Adobe Bridge. After that it worked fine. I have now opened Bridge again and have purged it's cache and all is well. So maybe (for me, at least) it was a memory thing (although I do have 16GB ram so you wouldn't expect it to flake out so easily. Maybe after a few days of building up a large cache it just decides that it's had enough..

I just had this problem for the first time when using Citrix Receiver on OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), which I recently upgraded to. I decided to install the latest version of Citrix Receiver (12.1), and that seems to have fixed the problem when I logged back into my work account. Note that Citrix doesn't seem to auto-update, so it's possible that some users have quite old software running that may then become incompatible with updates to OS X. At least that's my theory. Good luck to anyone else with this issue.

I just posted a fresh reply with the same issue, which I resolved by upgrading to the latest version of Citrix Receiver via the Citrix website.