Are you facing issues with your mouse cursor while working with Google Chrome? You might be surfing the internet when you realize that the mouse cursor is not showing up on Chrome. Well, there is a solution to this situation and in this article, we will talk about that.
Before that, I would like to pen down a scenario where one of my colleagues faced a similar issue. While using Windows OS on his tablet, he realized that the mouse pointer was disappearing the moment he launched Google Chrome or after some time, and when the issue got out of control, we together worked upon finding out the causes and solutions, and here is what we have found out.
What Causes Issues with Mouse Pointer on Google Chrome?
The issue where the mouse disappears in Chrome has generally been encountered after using the touch screen and that can be due to automatic hardware acceleration options of Chrome that are responsible for increasing the speed of the device. This issue has not been faced by users who use a mouse and a keyboard.
Other possible reasons for facing this issue are outdated drivers, caches, and cookies, peripherals behaving abnormally or system files are corrupt or missing.
Solutions to Apply When Cursor Pointer is Not Working in Chrome
When the cursor pointer is not working in Chrome, the following solutions may come to your rescue:
Method-1 Enable your Mouse
The possibility is that the cursor got disabled by mistake and pressing the keyboard keys as F3 (Fn+F3) or F7 (Fn+F7) or F9 (Fn+F9) or F11 (Fn+F11) may re-enable the cursor.
Method-2 Close the Chrome from Task Manager
Whenever the cursor disappears in Chrome, your first step towards fixing the error should be to restart the program.
For that,
- Open Task Manager
- In the program list, select ‘Google Chrome’ and click on ‘End task’.
- Doing that will kill all the chrome processes running and now you can exit the Task Manager window.
- Now, again try to use the Chrome browser and see if the cursor appears or not. Although it is a temporary solution, this method can fix the issue in some cases.
Alternatively,
You can restart Chrome without going through the struggle of task manager and use the restart function as follows:
- In the address bar, type ‘chrome://restart’ and press ‘Enter’.
- Doing this will immediately restart the browser, so make sure you don’t have important work going on as it automatically closes all the existing tabs.
Method-3 Using Google Chrome Settings
In the Advanced section of Google Chrome Settings, you will find a feature ‘hardware acceleration’ that facilitates smooth functioning of keyboard and mouse cursor. When you use Chrome, hardware acceleration ensures improved display performance and also influences the keyboard, trackpad, and touchscreen display, but during this process, the resources associated might face the compatibility issue making the mouse pointer disappear.
Disabling and enabling hardware acceleration can fix the issue; here is how to do it:
- Launch Google Chrome and from the menu, click on ‘Settings’.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Advanced’ in the left column.
- Then again scroll to the bottom and in the ‘System’ section, you will find an option ‘Use hardware acceleration when available’; click on ‘Relaunch’. You can also disable or enable the option using the toggle bar.
- Now, simply restart the Chrome browser and check if the issue got resolved. Make sure you keep the Hardware Acceleration option enabled to avoid facing a slower browser.
Method-4 Update the Browser
If the mouse pointer disappears only while using Chrome, an obvious workaround is to update it as the browser might have gone outdated and need some bugs to be fixed.
So updating your Chrome browser using the given steps might help:
- Open the Chrome browser and click on the menu icon; from the list, click on ‘Help’ and then click on ‘About Google Chrome’.
- You will see if Chrome has a pending update or is already up-to-date.
Method-5 Disable the Tablet Mode
If you are using a touch screen laptop, the feature known as ‘Tablet Mode’ in Windows 10 can make your cursor disappear in Chrome. When you enable the tablet mode, all the modern applications will open in full-screen mode making the cursor vanish.
Here is how you can disable the tablet mode:
- Go to Action Center (a message shaped logo in the taskbar) and turn the toggle-off for ‘Tablet Mode’.
- Reboot your computer and then check if the cursor appears.
Method 6- Update the Drivers
If the mouse or keyboard drivers have gone outdated, this can also make the cursor disappear in Chrome on Windows as well as Mac. To update the drivers:
- Open the Run dialog box by pressing the Windows key and R.
- Type ‘devmgmt.msc’ in the box and press ‘Enter’; this will open the Device Manager.
- From the list, click on ‘Mice and other pointing devices’ and look for the mouse connected to your device.
- Right-click on your mouse and then select the option ‘Update Driver’
Method- 7 Disconnect Multiple Mouse
If you have connected multiple mice, this can also lead to the disappearance of the cursor mainly when you are using a Bluetooth device.
Press Windows Key + I and then in the ‘Devices’ section, check if there are multiple mice connected, if yes, remove all those which aren’t in use.
Method-8 Try another Mouse or Port
If nothing helps, you can try changing the mouse and see if it makes the cursor appear or not. You can even try changing the mouse port as if the port is damaged, you will face this error.
Method-9 Reinstall Chrome
The next thing you can try is to re-install Chrome as that may fix the bugs and glitches that are making the cursor disappear.
Uninstall Chrome
- Go to ‘Control Panel’ of your device
- Then click on ‘Program and Feature
- From the list, select ‘Chrome’; right-click and click on ‘Uninstall’
Reinstall Chrome
After uninstalling Chrome, you need to re-install the latest version of the Chrome browser by going to the official website and click on ‘Download Chrome’.
After downloading, install it and see if the issue got resolved.
Summary
The mouse cursor may not appear for several reasons and you can apply all the above solutions one-by-one to fix that. Hopefully, it will fix the issue due to which mouse pointer disappears in Chrome.
