Highlight mouse position on OS X

Question

I often lose track of the location of the cursor when I bring my attention to something off-screen (a book, a mobile device, etc).
Since I have a big display, moving the mouse a little won't do the trick because the cursor is too small to be noticed in the peripheral view.

I wonder if there's a free tool that highlights the cursor after the mouse has been inactive for an arbitrary period of time.

I use OS X 10.9.2 (Mavericks)

I think a shortcut to would come in handy if there is no option for an inactivity timer.

Answer 1

Mouse locator is what you are looking for. The requirements are:

Universal binary compatible with both PowerPC and Intel processors. Requires Mac OSX version 10.4 (Tiger) or later. (321KB)

so it will work with you. This uses a shortcut as a trigger to 'ping' the cursor's location or a timer (in trigger delay) to show the cursor location.

You will be able to find your cursor very easily with this:

Highly visible locator instantly reveals your mouse position.

It installs this as a separate System Preference Pane.

These are all the options you can change:

I would recommend using F5 as the shortcut key because it is generally used for nothing on the Mac (by default)

If you want, you could also make your cursor slightly bigger, but this could be annoying, maybe covering words or letters when doing other stuff, but there is always the option!:

You’ll find the setting within the Universal Access pane of System Preferences (Apple menu->System Preferences). Click the Mouse & Trackpad tab and then click and drag the Cursor Size slider. The changes will take effect immediately, so choose a size you’re happy with.

Read more over here

Answer 2

I believe Mouse Locator will perfectly suit your needs

From the website:

• Highly visible locator instantly reveals your mouse position.
• Controllable trigger time period, from 1 second to 30 minutes.
• Eliminates the frustrating search of your screen.
• Indispensable addition to Mac OS X, v10.4 or later required.

So, you can set the amount of time the mouse has to be inactive for before it triggers itself. However, you can also set a shortcut to manually activate it.
You can also set the amount of time the locator is displayed for, even for infinity!

^{Picture of settings page}

You can also change the graphic which is used (by default it looks like the one on the top-right of the picture)

For more information, and a lengthy review, have a look at this: Mouse Locator - Cursor, cursor, where for art thou? - Mac OS X Hints

Mac OS X also has a built-in feature of zooming in on the mouse pointer:

I just zoom in
Authored by: mzs on Feb 20, '06 09:17:36AM

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Under Universal Access in System Preferences I have Zoom enabled. Whenever I cannot find my mouse I just press ⌥+⌘+= and my screen zooms in to where my mouse cursor is. Then I zoom back out with ⌥+⌘+-.

_{Per a comment on the linked Mac OS X Hints article. ³}

Answer 3

You can check out Presentify app for macOS. It puts a full circle or a ring around your cursor for better visibility. It has click animations. You can even customize the look and feel of the ring/circle like color, opacity, size, etc.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666

Disclosure: I am the developer of this app.

Answer 4

On my Macs just wiggling the mouse (or finger on the trackpad) a couple of times causes the pointer to expand. This is built in and costs you nothing.