Leopard 10.5.2: Customize mouse pointer

[root]

Does anyone know how you can customize the mouse pointer in Leopard? I can't stand the black and white busy cursor (really low res style right from 1980s).

The busy cursors I'm talking about are the black and white stop watch and the busy cursor that looks like a normal black cursor with a black and white low res spinning ball next to it.

 

[technologist]

Ordinarily, when a program under Mac OS X is busy, OS X will detect it and show the "spinning rainbow" or multicolored beachball pointer.

The wristwatch pointer is built into some applications which are older than Mac OS X. These programs take over the default pointer and show their own (the wristwatch.) Even if you did use a custom pointer, those programs would override it and replace it with the wristwatch. The only thing you can do is not use those programs (though many popular programs still do this.)

It may not be the shiniest, fanciest wait cursor in the world, but it's a piece of Macintosh history that does, indeed, date back to the 1980s.

 

[root]

Thanks.

Ordinarily, when a program under Mac OS X is busy, OS X will detect it and show the "spinning rainbow" or multicolored beachball pointer.

The wristwatch pointer is built into some applications which are older than Mac OS X. These programs take over the default pointer and show their own (the wristwatch.) Even if you did use a custom pointer, those programs would override it and replace it with the wristwatch. The only thing you can do is not use those programs (though many popular programs still do this.)

It may not be the shiniest, fanciest wait cursor in the world, but it's a piece of Macintosh history that does, indeed, date back to the 1980s.

I thought it would be hard to do this, since Google search didn't give me any clues. I've only had my first ever Mac 2 weeks, so I have a LOT to learn but it's fun to explore something new .

 

[rohan]

well yeah.....i've been bugged by those low res cursors as well....& also the hand cursor that comes up when i hover over a link...does look kinda old school...

 

[TWM]

does anyone know how to make the current pointer larger?

 

[MacRenegade]

does anyone know how to make the current pointer larger?

You can change its size in Universal Access in the System Preferences. The cursor does get kinda pixely though.

 

[xgman]

bump - on any new ways to chnage leopard cursors or make them less jaggy if made larger? They do seem so 1980's

 

[Leo6929]

does anyone know how i can turn the cursor white, i don't see the black so well

 

[xgman]

old school is an understatement. It's just plain butt ugly. Even my kid asked what's up with that ugly little cursor. Adding insult to injry, as mentioned above, enlarging it pixelates it even worse. We need something like Stardock CursorFX for leopard. This "Might Mouse" custom cursor program in the list below, worked pre-Leopard, but no beta yet. Maybe send him an email to encourage the development of a beta for Leopard.

http://www.unsanity.com/products/compatibility

 

[leopard-user1]

how you can make the mouse pointer larger with smooth edges

does anyone know how to make the current pointer larger?

You can download Cursor Zoom X 1.0.4 if you want to enlarge or shrink the mouse. It adds its own preference pane.

If this doesn't answer your question, please let me know.

 

[torchy]

does anyone know how i can turn the cursor white, i don't see the black so well

Look again, the Mac's curser is black with a white border and is visible on all colours.

OLD THREAD

 

[dichterDichter]

there was a CoreGraphics Hack for 10.2 and 10.3. Because of CoreGraphics is now unicode, i cant find a solution to use this hack on the file.
it was replacing the spinning icon (or the normal pointer)

Diff file available here

apply with:

gunzip WaveWait.diff.gz
cp /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/CoreGraphics CoreGraphics.bak
cp CoreGraphics.bak CoreGraphics.new
patch CoreGraphics.new < WaveWait.diff
# if that complains at all, see below
sudo cp CoreGraphics.new /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/CoreGraphics

OSX Cursors location found...

i tried to find the right hex part in the file to replace but... couldn´t find it.
so if someone knows how to extract or find picture information in a "Mach-O dynamically linked shared library" please tell me. for windows there are Tools like ResHacker which can extract and replace image files in exe and dll files. maybe there is something like that for osx. would be cool. and would be a solution

 

[rhys]

so it looks like it's impossible to change the cursor then? the mighty mouse software guy should update or someone else should get this sorted out.

i was expecting to be able to just go and replace a few little image files or something....

sux