How to Allow or Prevent Themes to Change Mouse Pointers in Windows 10 In Windows, you can use themes to help make your desktop feel a little more personal. Themes change the desktop background, colors, sounds, screen saver, and pointers on your PC all at once, and you can switch between themes as often as you like. This is one of the best windows 10 themes that have a minimalistic look but looks.

How to Allow or Prevent Themes to Change Mouse Pointers in Windows 10 In Windows, you can use themes to help make your desktop feel a little more personal. Themes change the desktop background, colors, sounds, screen saver, and pointers on your PC all at once, and you can switch between themes as often as you like. 11 Best Mouse Pointer Themes For Windows. The mouse cursors is the one and only thing that represents our hands inside our systems. Looking at the same. From Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and now, Windows 10, lots of things changed in layout or functionalities inside Windows operating system but the most frequently used thing is as it is – The mouse cursor. Unlike other changes and upgrades, the mouse cursor has seen little to no improvements. After Windows 10 installs the custom mouse cursors, it automatically opens the Mouse Properties window and selects the Pointers tab. Select the new custom mouse cursor Scheme from the drop-down list at the top. In the Customize cursors list, you can see a preview of all the pointers that are used by that mouse cursor scheme.

A mouse pointer, also known as the cursor is a graphical icon which represents your pointing device's movements on your display. It allows the user to manipulate objects on the screen with a mouse, a touchpad or any other pointing device. In this article, we will see how to change the appearance of the mouse pointer in Windows 10.

Best Cursors For Windows 10

In Windows 10, mouse cursors support themes, so you can change the appearance of all your cursors with one click. Windows comes with a few themes bundled. Some third-party themes come with a set of cursors. The user can change individual cursors manually using Settings, the classic Mouse Properties window, and also the Registry.

Change Mouse Pointer in Windows 10 using Settings

To change mouse pointers in windows 10, do the following.

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to Ease of Access - Mouse.
3. On the right, select the size of the cursor - standard, large, extra large - using thumbnail buttons under Mouse pointers.
4. Under the Pointer color, you can choose between the white and black mouse pointer color.

The Settings app has limited abilities to change the mouse pointers as of this writing, so most of the settings are still located in the classic Control Panel applet called 'Mouse Properties'.

Change Mouse Pointers in Windows 10 using Mouse Properties

To change the mouse pointer appearance using the classic Control Panel, do the following.

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Go to Control PanelHardware and Sound.
3. Under Devices and Printers, click the Mouse link.
   The following window will open:
4. There, switch to the Pointers tab. Here is how it looks.
5. Under Scheme, you can pick one of the installed cursor themes. See the screenshot below.
6. Under Customize, you can change individual cursors for the selected scheme. Select the desired cursor in the list, and click the Browse.. button to pick an alternative cursor file. You can choose a static cursor image (*.cur file) or an animated cursor (*.ani file).
7. Tip: Once you have finished customizing your cursors, you can click the button Save As under Scheme to save your changes as a new pointer scheme.
8. To reset the customized cursor and use the default one from the current theme, click the button Use Default.

Free Mouse Cursor Themes

Change Mouse Pointers in Registry

Using the built-in Registry Editor app, you can customize the cursors. Windows stores the path to each cursor file under the following Registry key:

Here is how you can edit them.

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Navigate to the following Registry key:

   Tip: You can access the desired Registry key with one click.

3. On the right, modify the (Default) string value and set it to one of the following values to apply any of the default cursor schemes:
   

   blank - this will set the default scheme named 'None'.
   Magnified
   Windows Black (extra large)
   Windows Black (large)
   Windows Black
   Windows Default (extra large)
   Windows Default (large)
   Windows Default
   Windows Inverted (extra large)
   Windows Inverted (large)
   Windows Inverted
   Windows Standard (extra large)
   Windows Standard (large)

4. To customize individual pointers, modify the following string values:
   

   Arrow - the pointer for 'Normal Select'.
   Help - the pointer for 'Help Select'.
   AppStarting - the pointer for 'Working in Background'.
   Wait - the pointer for 'Busy'.
   Crosshair - the pointer for 'Precision Select'.
   IBeam - the pointer for 'Text Select'.
   NWPen - the pointer for 'Handwriting'.
   No - the pointer for 'Unavailable'.
   SizeNS - the pointer for 'Vertical Resize'.
   SizeWE - the pointer for 'Horizontal Resize'.
   SizeNWSE - the pointer for 'Diagonal Resize 1'.
   SizeNESW - the pointer for 'Diagonal Resize 2'.
   SizeAll - the pointer for 'Move'.
   UpArrow - the pointer for 'Alternate Select'.
   Hand - the pointer for 'Link Select'.

Get new cursor schemes with Cursor Commander

Some time ago, I released a freeware app, Cursor Commander, which can help you manage cursors in Windows 10. The main idea of the Cursor Commander app is that you can install and apply multiple new cursors with a single click. It uses a special file extension, .CursorPack. It is actually a ZIP archive which contains a set of cursors and a special text file with instructions for the app to apply them.

1. Download Cursor Commander from HERE. You can also read a detailed description of the app HERE.
2. Unpack the file named Cursor Commander-1.0-Win8.exe. It works in Windows 10 without issues.
3. Run the installer and follow the setup instructions.
4. Now, pick a set of cursors you like from HERE. I will use the one named 'Aero Deep Blue', which goes well with the default theme in Windows 10:
5. Double click the CursorPack file you downloaded:It will be installed and appear in Cursor Commander's themes. From there, you can apply it with one click:
6. You can switch between cursor themes easily. When you get bored with the current theme, you can pick another one and click the button 'Use these cursors'. It is much faster than applying them manually with the Mouse Control Panel.

Cursor Commander is a freeware desktop app which works in Windows 10, Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. I have not tested it, but it should work fine in earlier versions of Windows too, like Windows Vista or XP with .NET 3.0 or .NET 4.x installed.

Actually there is a bug in Windows 7 and all later versions where custom cursors/mouse pointers get reset at startup when applied using Mouse Control Panel. The best fix for this is to use Winaero's Cursor Commander to apply them. Then they won't get reset to default and will scale correctly for higher DPI as well.

That's it.

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Windows 10 lets you personalize the mouse cursor beyond changing the color and size or making it easier to see. You can customize the pointer theme or even download and install cursor schemes, just as you could on previous versions of Windows.

Change the Default Cursor Scheme

arcreader software for mac download Windows has a few built-in cursor schemes that let you change the default appearance of the mouse pointer. This method will change the color (white, black, or inverted) and size (default, large, or extra-large).

• To get started, open up the Settings app by pressing Windows+I on the keyboard, and click “Devices” from the available options.
• Click “Mouse” form the pane on the left, scroll through the options until you see”Additional mouse options”, and click on it.
• Click the tab labeled “Pointers”.
• Click the drop down menu and select a scheme that works for you. Click “Apply” to save changes, and try out the look you chose.

Windows 10 also has a built-in way to change the color and size of your mouse pointer. You can change those from the Settings app without changing any of the theme options in the Mouse Properties window.

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Create a Custom Cursor Scheme

If you like the majority but not all of a scheme that Windows uses, you can change individual cursors of a scheme. Each scheme has 17 cursors that apply to different circumstances actions when hovering over things on your screen. After you customize a scheme to your liking, you can save it to the list of usable schemes.

• Open up the Settings app by pressing Windows+I on the keyboard, and click “Devices” from the available options.
• Click “Mouse” form the pane on the left, scroll through the options until you see”Additional mouse options”, and click on it.
• Click the tab labeled “Pointers”.
• Now, from the list of cursors under the Customise section, click one that you want to change, and then click “Browse”.
• The file browser will open to the system folder that holds all the cursors available for each scheme. Inside the folder, you will see two types of files that pertain to mouse pointers; they are .cur and .ani files. The former is a static cursor image, and the latter is an animated cursor image. A majority of cursors are static cursors, with only a couple that are actually animated (aero_busy and aero_working).
• Click on the cursor you want to replace, and click “Open” when you finish.
• Repeat the process for each cursor that you want to change. When you’re ready, click “Save as”, give this custom preset a name, and then click “OK” to save the scheme.
• When you finish, click “Apply” to save the cursor settings to your system for you to start using them.

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Download and Install Custom Cursor Theme Packs

If the few choices available aren’t enough, you can download a third-party cursor theme pack to install on Windows. The cursors are easy to set up and give your system a personal flair; you just won’t get the default white or black schemes.

RealWorld Designers’ Open Cursor Library has thousands of free cursor themes to choose from and is an excellent place to start if you’re looking to customize the Windows mouse cursors.

Because there isn’t an official Microsoft channel to download cursors, you should scan anything you download with your antivirus and be leery downloading anything from unknown sources.

After downloading a cursor theme pack, unzip the contents into a folder so you can access them in the next step.

Windows 10 Mouse Pointer Themes Templates

Note: A custom cursor theme pack will usually be a ZIP archive and only contains the two types of image files we mentioned earlier: .cur and .ani.

Windows 10 Mouse Pointer Themes Download

• Open up the Settings app by pressing Windows+I on the keyboard, and click “Devices” from the available options.
• Click “Mouse” from the pane on the left, scroll through the options until you see”Additional mouse options”, and click on it.
• Click the tab labeled “Pointers”.
• Now, from the Customize section, click on a cursor situation, and then click “Browse”.
• Navigate to the folder with the cursor files, click the file with the corresponding name, and then click “Open”.
• Repeat the process for each entry in the list and when you finish, click “Save as”, give it a name, and then click “OK” to save the custom scheme.
• Now, if ever you want to switch between themes, you can select it from the preset schemes in the drop down menu.
• When you finish saving the scheme, click “Apply” to start using it, and you can safely close the window or add another one to the list.