mouse cursor icon stuck as beach ball

This happened for me as well. I use a wacom tablet and a magic trackpad. I got the non-spinning beach ball for a cursor, but when I went to use the trackpad it reverted back to normal funtionality. Very weird.

I didn't have to reboot but could just go to login screen and log back in, not having to close down everything.

Very annoying still.

Thanks guys, that did the trick. I have a Cintiq & magic mouse connected - nudging the mouse reverted the icon back to a pointer. Cheers

I don't have another mouse/pointer device hooked up and none of the other tricks worked for me.

I'm using a wireless Logitech trackball, and simply turning it off for about 5-10 seconds made the cursor disapear then re-appear as the normal pointer arrow. I'd imagine doing the same with any mouse (or simply unplugging) would work too.

Hope this helps.

I had the same problem, usually when doing something in a Vmware Windows session. Utilizing some of the comments seen here, I found that by plugging in a separate mouse in a USB port and moving it slightly reverted the mouse icon to the arrow. So, I keep an extra mouse handy just in case. It's a pain, but it works and it avoids having to reboot or feel like I can't see around the ball to see what I'm doing.

I'm using a pen tablet and was having the same problem you describe. I unplugged the pen tablet and waited a second and the pointer icon reset to the normal shape/status. I was able to plug the pen tablet in after that and things worked okay again.

Same problem this morning, culminating weeks of what has been a daily ordeal to wake up my Macbook Pro and get to work. Much of this seems related to having an external monitor and mouse attached. Anyway I tried some of what was mentioned above (not plugging in a second mouse, and by the way I only have one pointing device attached). What worked for me was logging out and logging back in. I am hoping I don't have to add this to my daily ritual of unplugging the hdmi cable (to get rid of the pink screen and, sometimes, the pink mouse pointer that follows), typing in my password on a blank screen (this sometimes works when nothing else will wake the thing) etc. My Macs have always been cranky about waking up but Mavericks, instead of fixing the problem, has made it worse.

Same issue with a Wacom Graphire. Solved by turning my Magic Mouse on (via its hardware switch).

I just put my iMac to sleep then move my mouse and it resets

I was getting the spinning beach ball, but only in Safari - and Safari was working fine, just the wrong cursor. I had Safari to the front, and put it to sleep as ncarlin87 said, and it was back to the correct cursor when I woke it up.

I had same problem -- I had Wacom tablet attached - -I unplugged and re-plugged -- it went back to normal..........thanks for the posts.....these help, even if not specific........gave me some ideas.

I've been having this too.

Since Mavericks.

I read about the multiple input devices idea on this thread.

I have a Wacom Tablet but I hardly ever use it and this spinning thing started before I installed it.

I use an old Microsoft 3D mouse with a driver to allocate key commands in various software and for the last two operating systems I have had to go into OS system prefs and select the driver every time I re-start the mac because otherwise the driver doesn't see the mouse and it only uses OS commands instead of the programmed ones.

After reading this thread I found and turned on my bluetooth Apple mouse that came with the iMac and which I don't use as it is not suitable for 3D.

The computer recognised the mouse and the spinning beach ball turned back into a pointer.

I turned the Apple mouse off again and the pointer stayed.

I now have two mouse related workarounds for Mavericks!