Giant Cursor

Lost your mouse pointer? Shake it and it grows.

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Giant Cursor is a tiny, fast Windows utility for people who lose track of the mouse pointer — especially with low vision. Shake the mouse and the cursor instantly grows so you can find it, then it shrinks back on its own. Just like macOS, but on Windows.

It stays out of your way: no window, negligible CPU, and it keeps working even when dozens of apps are open.

Quick start

1. Download GiantCursorSetup.exe from the Releases page and run it.
2. Pick your language and tick "Start with Windows" if you want it always on.
3. Shake the mouse. The cursor grows. Stop shaking and it returns to normal.

Prefer no installer? Download giant-cursor-portable.exe and run it — zero dependencies, nothing to configure.

"Windows protected your PC"? That warning is expected — see Why does Windows warn about this? below.

Using it

What you want	What to do
Find the cursor	Shake the mouse back and forth
Back to normal	Just stop shaking (it shrinks after ~1s, even while you keep moving)
Configure it	Right-click the tray icon (next to the clock)
Quit	Tray icon → Quit
Cursor stuck large	Run giant-cursor.exe --restore, or simply launch the app again

Tray menu

Everything is configurable live, no restart:

Menu	Options
Cursor	Crisp arrow — sharp high-resolution pointer and hand — or System (zoom) — your real cursors, enlarged
Size	2x, 3x, 4x (default), 5x, 6x, 8x
Sensitivity	Low, Medium (default), High — how hard you must shake
Enlarged for	Short (0.7s), Normal (1s), Long (1.5s)
Language	English / Español (auto-detected from Windows)
Start with Windows	Toggle autostart

Game overlay (beta)

Games such as World of Warcraft ship their own cursor artwork, so enlarging the Windows cursor does not reach them. The overlay draws a separate always-on-top marker that follows the pointer instead.

Pick a mode from the tray menu, or start with -overlay halo:

• Halo ring draws a ring around the pointer. Recommended.
• Large pointer draws a big arrow. You will see two cursors, yours and the game's, because the game keeps drawing its own.

Two things to know:

• Play in windowed or borderless mode. Exclusive fullscreen bypasses the desktop compositor, so nothing drawn on top of it is visible.
• The overlay never touches the game. It is an ordinary window: nothing is injected into the game process, nothing is hooked, and no game memory is read.

Why does Windows warn about this?

When you run the download, Windows may show "Windows protected your PC — unknown publisher". That is expected, and it does not mean anything is wrong with the file.

Giant Cursor isn't code-signed. A signing certificate costs hundreds of dollars a year, and this is free software. Windows shows that warning for any unsigned program downloaded from the internet — Go, Electron, C++, it makes no difference.

To run it: click More info → Run anyway. You only do this once per file.

To verify the download is authentic: GitHub shows a SHA-256 for every release asset. Compare it with your copy:

Get-FileHash .\GiantCursorSetup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

If the hashes match, your file is byte-for-byte what the release workflow built from this source code.

Why not PowerToys "Find My Mouse"?

PowerToys draws a full-screen spotlight (heavy) and relies on a global mouse hook that Windows can starve when the system is busy — so it sometimes stops responding right when you need it.

Giant Cursor takes the opposite approach:

	PowerToys	Giant Cursor
Detection	Global mouse hook (can be starved)	Polling — can't be starved
Effect	Full-screen spotlight overlay	Swaps the system cursor — no overlay, no per-frame drawing
Result	Stutters under load	Reliable and light

Command-line options

You normally never need these — the tray covers everything.

Flag	Default	Description
--scale	4	Enlargement factor
--sensitivity	medium	low, medium, or high
--hold-ms	1000	How long it stays enlarged after the last shake
--lang	auto	en or es
--install	—	Enable autostart and save settings
--uninstall	—	Disable autostart and restore the cursor
--restore	—	Restore the cursor and exit (panic button)

Example: giant-cursor.exe --scale 6 --sensitivity high --install

Settings live in %LOCALAPPDATA%\giant-cursor\config.json.

How it works

• A background goroutine polls GetCursorPos ~120 times/second and flags a shake as several rapid direction reversals within a short window.
• On a shake it calls SetSystemCursor to swap the standard cursors for enlarged ones; after ~1s with no further shake it reloads your cursor scheme.
• Crisp arrow mode replaces the pointer and the hand with high-resolution artwork scaled down to the chosen size. Downscaling stays sharp — the blurriness of other tools comes from upscaling the 32px system cursors.
• The shake-detection logic is pure and fully unit-tested; Windows sits behind small adapters (hexagonal architecture).

Build from source

Requires Go 1.26+. No CGo, no external runtime — one self-contained .exe.

git clone https://github.com/JorgeLBJ/giant-cursor.git
cd giant-cursor
go build -o giant-cursor.exe ./cmd/giant-cursor
go test ./...

Release build (no console window):

go build -ldflags "-H=windowsgui -s -w" -o giant-cursor.exe ./cmd/giant-cursor

Regenerate the assets and the installer:

go run ./cmd/genicon                # app icon  <- assets/icon-source.png
go run ./cmd/genarrow               # cursors   <- assets/cursor-raw/*.png
iscc installer\giant-cursor.iss     # installer -> installer/Output/GiantCursorSetup.exe

To restyle a cursor, replace its art in assets/cursor-raw/ (white shape with a black outline on a blue background — the blue is keyed out automatically) and re-run go run ./cmd/genarrow. No code changes needed.

Known limitations

• Only standard system cursors are enlarged. Apps with a fully custom cursor (some games and design tools) are not affected.
• In Crisp arrow mode only the pointer and the hand use high-resolution artwork — the ones you see almost all the time. The remaining cursors (text caret, resize handles, busy…) are upscaled and therefore softer.
• System (zoom) mode is soft across the board, because Windows only ships its cursors at 32px. It is there for when you prefer your exact system cursors.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome — especially accessibility feedback from people who actually rely on this. Open an issue to start.

License

MIT © Jorge Luis Bustamante Jara — see LICENSE.