What Is Cursor Highlight?

Cursor highlight is the general category of effects that make a cursor more visible during screen recording. It encompasses glowing auras, drop shadows, colored rings, scale-up effects, and trail smears — any treatment that sets the cursor apart from the surrounding screen content. The need for cursor highlight arises from a fundamental mismatch: presenters know exactly where their cursor is at all times because they control it, but viewers have to visually locate a 16-pixel icon against an ever-changing background, often at video resolutions compressed for streaming.

Different highlight styles serve different use cases. A simple shadow increases visibility against both light and dark backgrounds with minimal visual weight. A colored ring or spotlight works well for tutorial recordings where the cursor is the primary teaching instrument. A subtle scale-up makes the cursor bigger without adding a colored overlay, which is useful when the cursor is over UI elements where color might clash. Trail effects show the path of cursor movement rather than just its position, which is valuable when teaching gesture-based interactions or drawing attention to a cursor trajectory across a wide canvas.

Cursor highlight in Limelight is implemented as part of the cursor spotlight system (⌃⌥1), which renders a soft-edged glow around the cursor that is baked into the exported video. Unlike OS-level accessibility features that make the cursor larger system-wide, Limelight's cursor highlight is scoped to the recording — your cursor looks normal in every other app, and the enhanced version appears only in the finished video. This makes it practical to leave on as a default recording setting without affecting your daily workflow.