Ahmad Awais

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Ahmad Awais

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Screencasting Tip: Auto Hide Cursor on macOS

Ahmad AwaisAhmad Awais

When recording a screencast (video tutorial) I like to hide my cursor. It’s distracting to see a cursor hanging around for no reason. Leads to a bad user experience, many times you think of it as your own cursor and try to move it away while watching a video — only to realize it’s not yours, and you’re stuck with it.

Trick Escape#

A little known trick to hide your cursor on macOS is to press the esc (escape) key. It generally works in many apps, but sometimes it does not. Though you can get by without installing anything.

Tip with an App#

When I am recording, I only want to focus on what I’m teaching. I love to teach, you can check out my How to build a Node CLI and VSCode Power User courses. So, instead of using the esc key trick, I use an app.

Cursorcerer is an app that allows you to hide your cursor with a global hotkey. It can also autohide an idle cursor and bring it back as soon as you move the mouse.

That’s what I like. After 3 seconds of inactivity, my cursor is gone until I move it again. So handy! You can take a look at how I set this app below.

Cursorcerer

Software

Founder & CEO of ⌘ Command Code coding agent with taste. Founded Langbase.com, AI cloud to build, deploy, and scale AI agents with tools & memory · Creator of Command.new.

"Awais is an awesome example for developers" — Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter mission code contributor 8th GitHub Stars Award recipient with 5x GitHub Stars Award (Listed as GitHub's #1 JavaScript trending developer). Google Developers Expert Web DevRel.

Ex VP Eng (DevTools & DevRel) Rapid · Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member · AI/ML/DevTools Angel Investor (Replit, Resend, Daytona, Gumroad and you?) ❯ AI/ML Advisory Board San Francisco, DevNetwork.

Award-winning Open Source Engineering leader authored hundreds of open-source dev-tools and software libraries used by millions of developers, including Shades of Purple code theme and corona-cli.

Linux Foundation (Node.js Committee Lead), OpenAPI Business Governing Board. Taught 108K+ developers via NodeCLI.com and VSCode.pro course. 274 million views, blogging for 24 yrs.

❯ Read more about Ahmad Awais or come say hi on 𝕏 @MrAhmadAwais.

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Comments 13
  • Furqan Anwar
    Posted on

    Furqan Anwar Furqan Anwar

    Reply Author

    What about windows ? Any preferred software?.



  • Awais
    Posted on

    Awais Awais

    Reply Author

    Unfortunately, not a windows user.

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