Simple: Bigger Mouse Pointer

Mac Accessibility 101

• Series: Simple accessibility hints
• Simple: Enlarging Text
• Simple: Bigger Mouse Pointer
• Simple: Alert Sounds You Can See
• Simple: The Computer Tells You The Time
• Simple: Show Icons in open/save dialag box
• Simple: Zoom in to see screen details more easily
• Simple: Zoom without smoothing
• Simple: Word Completion
• Make iTunes Easier To See and Use
• Simple Keyboard Shortcuts To Save You Time

The default size for the mouse pointer in OS X doesn’t suit everybody. Here’s how to make it bigger and easier to see.

Open System Preferences – it’s the fourth item in the Apple menu (the  shape) in the very top left corner of the screen as shown here:

In the “System” section, usually about the fourth line of icons in System Preferences, there is an icon labeled “Universal Access” which looks like a guy with his arms out on a blue circle. Click on the Universal Access icon.

The Universal Access pane has sections labeled “Seeing”, “Hearing”, “Keyboard”, and “Mouse”. Click on the “Mouse” section and you’ll see a bunch of options related to how the mouse works. Near the bottom of this pane is a slider labelled “Cursor Size”. Move the slider towards the right and watch the mouse pointer get larger as you do. You can move it to any point you like and the mouse pointer will stay that size.

The mouse pointer’s size will stay enlarged until you go back and set it to a smaller size again, logging out or rebooting the computer won’t change the size. This setting only applies to whichever account you are logged into when you change the setting, so if your computer has more than one account the others won’t be affected. The mouse pointer size also won’t be enlarged after you log out, so the login screen will still have the small pointer.

If you set the mouse pointer to a very large size, it can be sometimes hard to tell exactly where it’s pointing – especially when you are using the “I-beam” shape pointer that pops up when the mouse is over text. I suggest you open a file of text that you will be working on, and check that you can still use the mouse usefully with the text – some adjustment of the size might be useful.

There are other ways to make the mouse pointer more visible – programs are available that can make the pointer animated, change its colour, put something around the cursor to help users find it. Some of these programs have the visibility help there all the time, others especially highlight the mouse pointer only when you press a certain keystroke. If you are interested in programs like this, some are bookmarked with the tag mousepointer with ATMac’s del.icio.us account.

- Ricky Buchanan