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Comment by powerhour | Hacker News Reader

Yup. I am glad we've moved on, at least on windows, to double-tapping left ctrl to highlight the cursor. It's a pleasant effect.

macOS's shake-the-mouse gesture isn't as nice. It's such a "violent" gesture that it feels like it will just reinforce the feeling of frustration for users.

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macOS's is discoverable by the very action one might take trying to find the cursor even without knowing about it, while Windows' isn't. Source: I found the macOS one by accident, but didn't know about the Windows double-tap-ctrl thing until reading your post. Most likely I'll forget the ctrl trick by tomorrow, but shake-the-mouse was stuck in my brain the instant I found it.

Note that left ctrl trick is still just a PowerToy in Windows. That's one I'm surprised hasn't graduated to in box given its general usefulness for accessibility and overall simplicity.

Oh dang. Thanks, I didn't realize that.

Exploring mouse options for something else and stumbled upon a reminder there is an in box feature for it. It's off-by-default and the changes that Power Tool makes are: switch from single Left Ctrl to double Left Ctrl, and switches from classic Windows "wave of rings" visual (it expands a bunch of rings out from the pointer as a very simple animation) to the "Spotlight" mechanic that dims the screen except for a circle around the pointer.

It's built into "Mouse Properties" in the standard settings dialog on this Win11 box.

I don't really like the idea of double-tapping control either, for much the same reason, but wiggling the mouse seems gentler. I still use trails, though; I'll take all the help I can get.

Or maybe it's useful for when you do get frustrated and can't find the mouse cursor :)

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