3 Ways to Make the Mac OS X Cursor More Visible for Presentations

If you present or create screen casts with any regularity, you probably know that being able to clearly show the cursor can make a huge difference in the audiences ability to follow what you are doing on screen. This is especially true for product demonstrations and high resolution screens shown by projectors, where a tiny cursor can easily get lost.

Whether you are using QuickTime’s Screen Recorder or demoing new software to a group, here are three ways to make the Mac OS X cursor more visible for a presentation, two are free and one is a paid but professional solution.

1) Mouseposé – $2.99 on the Mac App Store
By far the most attractive and the professional solution, Mousepose creates a shade around the mouse cursor to highlight where the mouse is at all times on screen. Mouseposé is also smart enough to recognize window focus and then redirect the visual highlight to that window. Finally, Mousepose will display what keys and keystrokes are being pressed, making it extremely easy for an audience to follow along during tutorials, walkthroughs, or product demonstrations. Whether you are a full time presenter or casual screen caster, Mousepose is an invaluable addition to your toolkit.

2) Mouse Locator – Free
Mouse Locator is a simple preference add-on that can be either triggered by a keystroke or always enabled, it creates a green crosshair of sorts around the cursor making it easy to identify on screen. The primary weakness with Mouse Locator is that the default green image doesn’t look as professional as Mousepose’s offerings, but if you don’t mind designing one yourself then you can use your own cursor by creating a transparent PNG file named “MouseLocator.png” and placing it in your ~/Pictures folder. The customization aspect makes this a good free solution.

3) Increase the Cursor to a Larger Size – Free and no downloads required
You can do this yourself directly in Mac OS X’s Universal Access preferences, just adjust the slider to make the Mac cursor significantly larger and very easy to see on the screen. If you are looking for a free solution that makes the mouse cursor very easy to identify on screen and requires no additional downloads, this works fine.