These Google Eyes Will Help You Find the Cursor on Your Mac
It happened again: among the huge tabs, dozens of windows and countless unread messages, you somehow lost your cursor. It might be hiding in the corner of your screen, but, hmm, nothing seems to be popping up from any of them. Moreover, if your Mac is connected to multiple monitors on your desk, the cursor could be anywhere . Ask work to move up deadlines; you’ll need a minute.
But before you damage your reputation, there is a better way. Actually, there are several ways, but one of them is much more fun. To save yourself from this heartbreak in the future, try ” Googly Eyes “, a free app that adds a pair of googly eyes to your Mac’s menu bar.
Googly Eyes is the creation of Sindre Sorhus , a developer we’ve written about frequently on Lifehacker. Sorhus has created menu bar stickers , tools to adjust the spacing between menu bars , an easy way to switch your default browser on the fly , an app to increase the number of extensions supported by Shortcuts , and a tool to make Finder more like Windows Explorer .
Googly Eyes is a little different because its premise is complicated: As soon as you install and launch the app, you’ll find a pair of cartoonish Googly Eyes in your Mac’s menu bar. These eyes follow the position of the cursor: move the mouse or slide the finder across the trackpad, and the eyes will follow it.
My cursor disappeared while I was typing the above paragraph. Instead of scrambling around to find it, I can look at the bulging eyes and see that they are focused on the right side of my Mac, and then move the mouse to the left, where my cursor will appear again, as expected. Click with your mouse or trackpad and the eyes will blink. It’s fun and useful.
That’s all there is to it. If you’re bored on your Mac, you can move your cursor over the googly eyes to mess around with them a little. Dragging directly between the eyes will cause them to be cross-eyed, and dragging towards one eye will cause that eye to move slightly away from the other.
macOS now has a built-in solution if you can’t find your cursor: shake it. Shaking the cursor very quickly not only increases the likelihood that you’ll see it move across the screen, but your Mac will also temporarily make it appear huge. It’s a great feature, but it’s not perfect: sometimes shaking the cursor won’t bring it up, especially if you’re working on different monitors or the task requires more vigorous shaking than you might expect. In these cases, you may need a pair of helpful eyes to watch you and tell you the position of the cursor.
Googly Eyes is a simple tweak, but Sorhus has some troubleshooting tips if you need them: If you don’t see Googly Eyes in the menu bar after opening an app, close some of the other menu bar apps, as macOS sometimes hides these apps when there are too many open at once (especially on smaller displays). If your Mac doesn’t have access to the App Store, you can download the app directly from Sorhus , but note that this method does not provide automatic updates, and Sorhus will only update the app on its website annually.