Free cursor highlighter for Mac
Make your cursor impossible to miss.
Limelight is a free cursor highlighter for Mac. Press one hotkey and a glowing spotlight follows your mouse, live, on top of any app — so nobody ever asks 'wait, where's your cursor?' again.
Free forever · no account · macOS 14+
Most Mac cursor highlighters cost money. This one is free.
- ✓Glowing spotlight that follows your cursor
- ✓Works over any app — Zoom, Meet, Keynote, your IDE
- ✓One global hotkey to toggle (⌃⌥1)
- ✓No account, no sign-up, fully offline
- ✓Nothing recorded or uploaded
- ✓Free forever — not a time-limited trial
Why you need a cursor highlighter on Mac
On a shared screen or a 1080p recording, the macOS cursor is a tiny 12-pixel arrow. The moment you say 'click here,' your audience starts hunting for where 'here' is — and the flow of your demo, lesson, or meeting breaks.
A cursor highlighter fixes this by drawing a bright, glowing ring around your pointer so it is always the first thing the eye lands on. Limelight does exactly that, live, on top of whatever you are showing.
Genuinely free — most alternatives are paid
Search for a cursor highlighter on Mac and almost every result is a paid app. Limelight makes the cursor spotlight free forever: download it, press ⌃⌥1, and the highlight is on. No account, no trial clock, no watermark.
If you later want the full presenter toolkit — on-screen keystrokes, freehand drawing, a region spotlight, and text — that is a Pro unlock ($2.99/mo or $34 lifetime). But the cursor highlight itself stays free, for anyone, for good.
Built for live moments, not editing
Limelight is a native macOS menu-bar app, not a screen recorder. It paints a live overlay over your screen, so it works inside Zoom and Google Meet calls, on top of Keynote and PowerPoint, and during any screen recording you make with QuickTime, OBS, or Screen Studio.
Because the highlight is a real overlay, anything that captures your screen captures the spotlight too — your recordings and shares come out clear with zero editing.
Follows your mouse, live
A soft glowing spotlight tracks your cursor everywhere it goes — no lag, no setup.
One hotkey
Toggle the highlight on and off instantly with ⌃⌥1, from any app.
Over any app
Slides, browsers, code editors, design tools, meeting apps — it works on top of all of them.
Private by design
No account, fully offline, and nothing is ever recorded or uploaded.
How to use it
- 1Download Limelight free and open it — it lives in your menu bar.
- 2Grant Accessibility permission once (required to draw over other apps).
- 3Press ⌃⌥1 — a glowing spotlight now follows your cursor. Press it again to turn it off.
FAQ
- Is this cursor highlighter really free?
- Yes. The cursor spotlight is free forever — no account, no time limit, no watermark. Only the extra presenter tools (keystrokes, drawing, region spotlight, text) are part of the Pro unlock ($2.99/mo or $34 lifetime).
- Does it work in Zoom, Google Meet, and recordings?
- Yes. Limelight is a live overlay, so the highlight appears in any screen share or screen recording — Zoom, Meet, Teams, OBS, QuickTime, and more.
- How is this different from the built-in macOS cursor options?
- macOS can enlarge the pointer, but it cannot put a glowing, attention-grabbing spotlight that you toggle with a hotkey. Limelight is built for presenting, so the highlight is designed to pull the viewer’s eye.
- What macOS version do I need?
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Limelight is a native SwiftUI app for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
- Does it record my screen?
- No. Limelight never captures, records, or uploads anything. It only draws a live overlay on top of your screen.
Free forever · no account · macOS 14+ · from $2.99/mo or $34 lifetime