Mouse arrow pointer changes to a hand

I too was struggling with this issue. Everytime I had to restart my Mac but I figured a solution this time which I suppose will work for you.

Try a three finger swipe (left to right) on your touchpad and that should take you to the dashboard screen and when get you back, you will find your mouse arrow cursor back.

This worked for me, hope it does for you too.

You are getting yourself tied up in knots and misunderstand what is going on.

It is not an "Adobe hand" it is the grab cursor that comes up when you are over an image in a shape and can grab and move it:

The cross hair cursor is when you hold down the option key and drag over text to select an area of text.

Peter

I am not a tech person. I don't understand well your reply comment, but what I did fixed the problem for me. Please do not over complicate your answers. If you want to help everyone, you need to speak clearly for everyone not just the tech people.

We have the same problem with Apple Mail. The "hand" appears when you bring the mouse into the toolbar. The "hand" does not appear to do anything, like move the toolbar icons, but if clicked it places that mail item in the trash? It's not a dealbreaker but it is annoying. If there is a way to change the status of the mouse pointer I would like to know about it.

Believe me I read your post most carefully, and you have just contradicted yourself again. What you are showing is the opposite of what you saying.

Which one am I supposed to pick?

I did not show you the Link cursor, which is also not the "Adobe Reader" cursor, I showed you the Grabber cursor. Adobe does not create or own these cursors they are all Mac OSX cursors and mean various things.

The Link cursor appears over links such as website URLs or eMail addresses. Or in Pages '09 mookmarks.

The Grabber cursor appears as I showed over images in Pages that you can move to recrop.

The Crosshair cursor does what I demonstrated which is select an area of text.

There is not "clearly some problem of "interference" from Adobe Reader into my Pages programme".

You are leaping to the wild conclusion, when you see the same (consistent) User Interface in two different applications, that one is affecting the other.

That is like saying one man is controlling another because they are both wearing hats.

On a very long shot, I can't see your screen, you may have corrupted .plists.

Peter

I am also experiencing an annoying hand problem in Apple mail, which replaces the cursor before eventually changing to cursor mode. The hand acts as if it is waiting for time to elapse. A pain.

I had this problem too and it turned out to be an acrobat document that I had open in Safari. Once I closed the document, my cursor went back to an arrow.

The Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-ins, if installed, are only pertinent to Safari, as Chrome and Firefox have their own PDF capability. Whatever has happened, to your Pages ’09 session, I cannot replicate the change in mouse pointer shape that you have experienced. I suggest you reboot your Mac, and evaluate if these artifacts continue.

Without wishing to be rude, I think Peter is completely missing the point. I fully understand what you are saying as I have exactly the same problem - why is it so difficult to understand? My mouse pointer has started changing to a hand (not a pointing hand) EVEN WHEN I do not want to move something or highlight something or do anything else that might make it do so - it just changes and then will change back - as simple as that, today it has started changing!!!!! NLMza did you manage to get to the bottom of it please? if so would appreciate your help.......... Please don't reply Peter as I don't think you are understanding the problem, whichever way you try to illustrate it.

I think you are missing Peter's point; the cursor changes automatically based on the context where you put it. That is normal behavior. The system doesn't know what you "want" to do, it just knows what it can do at the location in which you have placed it. If you put it where the possible function is to drag an object, it changes to the hand to let you know that that is what can be done in that context.

I had your problem… and was frustrated of not finding a way to get rid of the hand tool. Then, I was reading a downloaded PDF in Safari, and right clicked and saw the option to switch the hand tool to arrow, just like if I was in adobe reader. I selected the arrow and then the hand stop showing in all my apps… Crazy.

So easy fix, but not logical -- It may be the result of some kind of glitch or bug.

When you install Adobe Acrobat Reader, it also overrides the default OS X PDF browser plug-in with Adobe's Reader PDF browser plug-in. When you display a PDF in Safari, it is Adobe that is permitting you to change the application icon style from the default hand (move) icon to the pointer (select) icon. After all, try selecting text in a PDF document with the hand icon. Nope. Close this PDF browser tab, and these settings are no longer relevant to Safari, or any other installed OS X application.

As has been succinctly explained by Peter and Jeff, these icons are dynamic based on your mouse actions within an application, or document objects that trigger the type of icon presentation. These icons may have been in the Apple Lisa long before Adobe Systems, the X Window System, Mac OS, Windows, NeXTSTEP, Linux, or OS X.

Had the same problem, unchecked all the “Make Hand tool…” boxes in Adobe Acrobat > Preferences > General

It worked, the hand is gone.

On Acrobat Pro DC 2015, macOS Sierra 10.12.2