In my case, this was the source of all my phantom cursor woes. If the program finds anything, it can isolate and delete it safely.Ĭommon Cause #4: Trackpad Damage/Misalignment Use a free trial of a program like MacScan to check your hard drive for anything nasty. As we all know, Macs are generally less likely to get these sorts of problems than PCs, but it can still happen. If you have malware, viruses, or spyware infecting your computer, they can sometimes cause cursor malfunction. Just make sure to go into System Preferences after plugging in the mouse and select “Ignore Trackpad When Mouse is Present” under Trackpad Settings. If a faulty trackpad is the cause of your cursor bouncing around the screen, using a mouse instead can circumvent the fault. By effectively making your trackpad less sensitive to your input, you may eliminate the cause of your cursor issues.Īnother possible way to resolve the phantom cursor issue on a Mac laptop is to attach a USB mouse and use that in lieu of your trackpad. Select Trackpad, and then de-select the box for Trackpad Gestures and check “Ignore accidental trackpad input”. To figure out if your cursor issues are caused by your settings, go into System Preferences. If you’ve got the dreaded “phantom cursor” haunting your Mac (and you’re running a version of OSX 10), here’s a rundown of the major causes of this issue to help you diagnose what is causing your cursor malfunction.Ĭommon Cause #1: You Need to Adjust Your Trackpad Settingsįor some Mac laptops, the problem is related to your trackpad settings. My ensuing struggle with my Mac to solve the mystery of the phantom cursor took about a week of searching Mac user forums, inventive troubleshooting, and asking my friends who used Macs if they had ever encountered something similar. My productivity plummeted because I couldn’t write even half a blog post without it all going to pieces. Sections of my text documents would get highlighted, and then get completely erased the next time I made a keystroke. I’d just be typing, and all of a sudden, the cursor would jump to a random location on the page and all my text would move to that portion of the document. Okay, not like “possessed by a ghost” possessed, but something strange was definitely going on. For a while a few months back, my Mac was possessed. 3+ years later and it’s still going strong I’ve never had a single issue with it. I’d used Macs a bit in elementary school, and then again during college in our school’s computer lab, but it wasn’t until after I graduated that I bought my first MacBook. I converted to the cult of Mac about 3 years ago.
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