It’s hard to work without a mouse on a desktop. You can stick to using just the keyboard if you’re inside one app but a mouse or trackpad makes it easier to navigate between apps, select files, and customize the desktop. In some cases, e.g., when you’re watching a video, the mouse cursor should automatically hide itself. It should automatically do so but if it doesn’t you can hide the cursor on macOS with a keyboard shortcut.
Hide cursor on macOS
In order to hide the cursor on macOS, you have to install a free little utility called Cursorcerer. It installs as a preference in the System Preferences app. Download and run it.
You can hide the cursor with the Option+Control+K keyboard shortcut. The shortcut works globally which means you can execute it in any app and it shouldn’t interfere with anything. If you do find it’s conflicting you can change the shortcut.
Click the Set button in the app’s preference pane and record a new shortcut.
Execute the shortcut once to hide the cursor, and a second time to unhide it. If you shake your mouse or move it a bit, the cursor also reappears. This may or may not be a useful feature. You can enable or disable it from the app’s preference.
Cursorcerer has one other feature; it can automatically hide the cursor after a few seconds of inactivity. You can pick the interval from the app’s preferences. It can only be set in seconds and the maximum interval is 30 seconds, or you can set it to never hide automatically.
Normally, in situations where the cursor being visible isn’t required, it should hide itself. This goes for when you’re watching a video, or presenting on your device or a paired/connected device/screen. Unfortunately, the cursor doesn’t always hide itself. Sometimes it’s a problem with the OS not triggering the feature and other times it’s a problem with the app. In either case, Cursorcerer fixes the problem.
This problem isn’t particular to macOS. It happens on all desktops. With other operating systems e.g., Windows 10, if you tap the comma or the full stop key on your keyboard it will often hide the cursor when watching a video or giving a presentation. This same trick doesn’t work on macOS hence the need for an app like Cursorcerer. You can try this trick on macOS too and it may work in some apps but for apps where it doesn’t Cursorcerer will do the trick.