It’s not that I find a cursor (or mouse pointer) hard to see on the screen… or so I thought.
I’m doing some online Word training for a company soon and as I’ll be pointing at stuff on the screen on the Microsoft Teams call, I figured I should set my mouse pointer to be larger and a different colour so they can see it easily as I move it about. I changed it a few hours ago—and haven’t changed it back! It certainly makes finding and clicking things quicker, though the very large I-beam cursor is a bit of a nuisance when trying to select or edit text.
To change the mouse pointer size and colour in Windows 10: Mouse settings > Adjust Mouse and Cursor Size, then use the slider to adjust the size of the pointer; to change the colour, click the box with the rainbow colour wheel and then choose a colour.
I then tried to get a screenshot of a part of a Word screen, with the larger mouse pointer, but SnagIt changed it back to the standard size, though it did keep the colour change. It’s still hard to see on screen, even with that green
That seemed strange so I retested it and there’s no way I could capture a large mouse pointer with SnagIt (I’m using the latest 2022 version). I logged a support ticket with the SnagIt people, as I suspect this was a bug. They got back to me within hours, with an explanation and an alternative.
Here’s their response (slightly edited):
I was able to reproduce your issue on my computer, so I reached out to a Snagit Lead to make sure this was intended behavior. Unfortunately, this is intended behavior due to how cursors work within Snagit. Snagit allows users to delete their cursor from a capture if needed, and this is possible because Snagit can only recognize a standard size cursor from Windows.
The strange thing I found which could serve as a workaround for you is that the cursor size AND color are preserved when doing a video recording in Snagit. You can take a short video capture with your custom cursor, then select “Save frame as”. You can see that the cursor in the video is still size 4, and it is still lime green! I know this isn’t ideal, but I thought I would share it with you in case it helps.
Based on this, I’ve listed a few ways you can capture a large cursor in a screenshot:
- Use a different screen capture method/program, if you have one
- I tried using PaintShop Pro X5, but while the screen capture worked, the cursor wasn’t captured despite setting it to capture the cursor; I tested this with a large green cursor and the default cursor, and neither were captured
- The inbuilt Windows Snipping Tool has no option to capture the cursor, a serious failure in my opinion
- This article tells you how to use the inbuilt Windows Steps Recorder (new to me!), but it only captured the cursor at the default size, like SnagIt did (and like SnagIt, it kept the green): https://www.laptopmag.com/au/articles/include-mouse-cursor-windows-10-screenshot
- This article also talks about using Steps Recorder, as well as the free IrfanView (I didn’t test IrfanView): https://www.howtogeek.com/734679/how-to-take-a-screenshot-with-a-visible-mouse-cursor-in-windows-10/
- Capture the screenshot in SnagIt without the cursor, then use the tools in SnagIt Editor to add a pointer or other highlight to the part you want to feature.
- Use the video capture feature of SnagIt, then when you play it back, stop at the point you want to capture, then click the GIF or PNG icon to capture that frame (with the large cursor) as an image in SnagIt.
My final result using SnagIt’s video capture then capturing a single frame:
[Links last checked January 2022]
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