A pointer you can find

Make the arrow on a computer bigger, brighter and slower, and summon it to your eye when it has gone missing.

A computer draws its pointer as a thin gray-and-white arrow about the size of a grain of rice. That size was chosen in the nineteen-eighties, on screens a quarter as detailed as the one in front of you.

Three separate changes turn it into something you can keep track of, and none of them are unusual. Plenty of people who work at a screen all day make the pointer large and bright, because it saves them looking for it forty times an hour.

The wording changes, the settings do not.

The shake-to-find gesture on a Mac is worth trying on somebody else’s machine if you have never seen it. A quick scrub back and forth, and the arrow briefly becomes the size of a shipping stamp.

Key points

Make the pointer several times bigger and paint it a color nothing else on the screen is
Slow it down so it lands where you aim it
Summon it to your eye with a tap of the Ctrl key
Know that finding the arrow and landing the arrow are two different problems

What to remember

Pointer size and color are under Accessibility, in Mouse pointer and touch.
Size solves finding. Speed solves landing. They are different complaints with different answers.

Try this

Open Lantern’s own Settings, find Pointing and pressing, and turn on Larger buttons everywhere. It makes every button and link in Lantern bigger to aim at, which is the other half of the same problem, and it changes nothing outside this app.

Practice: A pointer you can find. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.