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I don’t think you will ever be able to change the cursor to an arrow pointer because Apple is more interested in being different than they are interested in bei

I don’t think you will ever be able to change the cursor to an arrow pointer because Apple is more interested in being different than they are interested in being useful. This became very clear to me when I realized that you have not ever been able to even change the color of the pointer in macOS, nevermind the shape. I wanted it to be white so it would stand out more. Apple doesn’t care - they are too busy projecting style to care about users petty practical needs.

gnicholas 6y ago
I remember doing this with ResEdit, on Mac OS 9. Not sure if it was ever possible on OSX
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. You have always had to use some third-party hack tool to work around Apple. That’s why it will never, ever be an option on the iPad.
- xoa 6y ago
  Don't think there was ever a setting for changing color and cursor shape native in macOS (though size and such is in Accessibility), but it's always been possible by digging into the system a bit (just like all the icons are simply .icns bundles in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ and can be easily replaced to change the mediocre current icons with better ones). There have long since been many 3rd party utilities to make it easier/more automated, though some of them seem to have gotten abandoned. Here's an open source one called Mousecape if you're curious for example, but you have to fork it and remove the sparkle framework to make it work in 10.15: https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape There's various commercial pointer modification utilities, as well as simpler highlighter-effect ones like Mouseposé and Pinpoint. Theming on macOS was a big awesome thing at one point, kind of too bad it seems to have fallen away a bit (in part because Apple's new security efforts have made it ever more work). At least it's still doable though.
greggman3 6y ago
I only recently found out I could set the color of the pointer in Windows 10. I set it to a bright turquoise/cyan which makes it stick out much better than it used to.
- netsharc 6y ago
  In Windows 9x one had themes to change colors and mouse cursors, I even had a Star Trek Voyager theme where the pointer was the ship, angled so it looks like a pointer. It seems this feature is still in Windows 7, but no longer in Windows 10.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    It's still there, you need to use the old mouse configuration interface.
  - karatestomp 6y ago
    Yoda Stories shipped with Star Wars Windows theme stuff, including an X-Wing mouse cursor.

gnicholas 6y ago

I remember doing this with ResEdit, on Mac OS 9. Not sure if it was ever possible on OSX

wayneftw 6y ago
Yes, exactly. You have always had to use some third-party hack tool to work around Apple. That’s why it will never, ever be an option on the iPad.
xoa 6y ago
Don't think there was ever a setting for changing color and cursor shape native in macOS (though size and such is in Accessibility), but it's always been possible by digging into the system a bit (just like all the icons are simply .icns bundles in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ and can be easily replaced to change the mediocre current icons with better ones). There have long since been many 3rd party utilities to make it easier/more automated, though some of them seem to have gotten abandoned. Here's an open source one called Mousecape if you're curious for example, but you have to fork it and remove the sparkle framework to make it work in 10.15: https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape https://github.com/alexzielenski/Mousecape There's various commercial pointer modification utilities, as well as simpler highlighter-effect ones like Mouseposé and Pinpoint. Theming on macOS was a big awesome thing at one point, kind of too bad it seems to have fallen away a bit (in part because Apple's new security efforts have made it ever more work). At least it's still doable though.

greggman3 6y ago

I only recently found out I could set the color of the pointer in Windows 10. I set it to a bright turquoise/cyan which makes it stick out much better than it used to.

netsharc 6y ago
In Windows 9x one had themes to change colors and mouse cursors, I even had a Star Trek Voyager theme where the pointer was the ship, angled so it looks like a pointer. It seems this feature is still in Windows 7, but no longer in Windows 10.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  It's still there, you need to use the old mouse configuration interface.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  Yoda Stories shipped with Star Wars Windows theme stuff, including an X-Wing mouse cursor.