Answers...

to commonly asked questions.

Mouse and trackpad

Why won't my cursor respond?

Ever since our session the other day I’m having trouble finding my cursor. Eventually it just seems to show up but it takes several minutes. Possibly an unintended consequence of something we did?
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There's no setting or change a person can make on a Mac that will disable the cursor so it would't be tied to any particular setting. However, it wouldn't hurt to make a couple small changes in system preferences that will force the Mac to rewrite the preference file associated with mouse behavior.

In system preferences go to "Accessibility". On the left, select Display then Cursor on the right side as seen below.



Now increase or decrease the slider and that will change the cursor size. It will also force a file (called a plist file) deep inside your computer to make adjustments. That alone may solve your problem. While at it, check out the "shake mouse" setting as well.

Other suggestions:

Restart your computer while holding down command+option+p+r. Then wait to hear the computer chime three different times. This resets the "parameter ram" and could be of use.

Use a plugged in mouse to see if the behavior goes away. Using a plugged in mouse would tell us where the problem is NOT and would give us a better idea of what to do next. For instance, it could be taking a long time for bluetooth to communicate with the mouse. If you are using a wired mouse, there is no bluetooth involved and therefore we would attack bluetooth settings next.

Lastly, if none of those end up being solutions, it could be that a different process on your computer is running so hard that the mouse is unable to respond due to all the CPU being used for some other task. This is rare but a possibility. Let's try the other solutions first.
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