When you are of the kind of people who also like a distortion-free screen, you may also dislike that the macOS cursor sometimes shows up in fullscreen video playback.

Fortunately a simple solution by the push of a button…

macOS Fullscreen Play Mouse Cursor still visible

Press+hold the fn-key for a few seconds

As suggested by Bill in the comments, and confirmed by chokdidesign a few laters to be still working: press and hold the fn key on your keyboard while in fullscreen video playback – and the mouse cursor will be hidden within a few seconds.

Earlier alternative: press the F8-key on the keyboard

Press the F8 function key on your keyboard while in fullscreen (e.g. video playback) – and the mouse cursor will be gone!

Remember: depending on your primary use for the F(unction)-keys, you may need to hold both the fn+F8 keys to achieve the same result.


Bonus: hide mouse cursor solution on Macs with Touch Bar

Unfortunately the F8 / fn solutions seem not to be working on MacBooks with a digital Touch Bar anymore (I was able to test it with macOS Mojave latest). So I found the following approaches to hide the mouse cursor on Macs with a Touch Bar:

  1. Press the fn key + up-arrow at the same time
    According to a valuable comment on this blog post by Anonymous, and confirmed by others, this seems to do the trick & hide the mouse cursor!
     
  2. Try pressing the Spacebar twice to quickly pause & replay the video.
    In my case this caused the macOS mouse cursor to disappear in fullscreen video playback.
     
  3. And of course there’s an app for that: «Cursorcerer» gives you total control over showing/hiding the macOS mouse cursor. Grab it here & assign your custom shortcut for hiding the mouse cursor anytime: Cursorcerer – Hide your Cursor at will
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22 thoughts on “Hide that bothering mouse cursor in macOS when fullscreen playing a video”

  1. The F8 key doesn’t actually do anything. This is a weird piece of mac lore that gets repeated even though it literally does nothing. A tool like Cursorcerer can make an actual shortcut to hide and show the cursor.

    1. Hi erik & thanks for your comment

      I am surprised that you categorise it as “mac lore”, because I successfully tested and proved it working to hide the macOS cursor e.g. when playing fullscreen movies from Netflix or YouTube on the Mac by pressing the F8 key (or fn+F8 respectively)!

      It must be noted though, that this is not a generic “hide the cursor”-feature, always available while in the OS! It solely applies when you are watching a fullscreen movie playback. When something is needed to truly hide the cursor, e.g. even when just regularly using macOS, then of course the use of an app for that is required.

      1. I can confirm that while watching YouTube and Netflix videos in fullscreen, F8 (fn+F8) does not hide the mouse. Tested both in Chrome and Safari.

  2. Tried this out on my MacBook Pro with touchpad. Interestingly I can hide the pointer by just holding down Fn for a few seconds. Chrome/Netflix

  3. FOR MACBOOK WITH TOUCHBAR AND OSX MOJAVE HOLD FN KEY AND PRESS UP-ARROW.
    Just randomly discovered this and thought i’d post even if it’s super late.

    1. YOU ARE A LIFE SAVER SERIOUSLY AN ABSOLUTE ANGEL

      IT TOOK ME HOURS TRYING TO FIND OUT!!! AND THEN I FOUND YOUR COMMENT

  4. Function and up arrow worked on my MacBook running Catalina, thanks for the comment above…

  5. I finally figured out a fix (haven’t tried the above fix yet as it seems the best), discovered this through trial and error, but if you exit out of your movie, hit fullscreen using the “green spot” (not the fullscreen toggle), then play your movie again you won’t get the problem…Tadaa! Thank you, thank you

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