The Swelling Pointer
macOS includes a well-intentioned accessibility feature colloquially known as “Shake to Find.” If you lose track of your tiny mouse cursor on a massive 5K display or across a multi-monitor setup, you can quickly shake your physical mouse back and forth. macOS detects this rapid, erratic movement and instantly responds by automatically enlarging the digital cursor on the screen to massive proportions, making it impossible to miss. While helpful for some, if you are a gamer executing rapid flick-shots, or a designer using a graphics tablet with quick strokes, this feature constantly triggers by accident, obscuring your work with a giant, cartoonish arrow.
Disabling ‘Shake to Find’
To keep your pointer a consistent, predictable size and stop macOS from automatically changing the mouse cursor size when you move it quickly, you must disable this specific feature within the Accessibility settings.
Click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings (or System Preferences on older macOS versions). In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll down and click on Accessibility. In the main panel, under the “Vision” category, click on Display. Look near the top of this new menu for a section specifically dedicated to the “Pointer.” You will see a toggle switch labelled Shake mouse pointer to locate. By default, this is turned on. Click the toggle switch so that it turns grey (Off). You can now move your mouse as erratically and rapidly as you want; the cursor will remain stubbornly fixed at its standard size.