Why doesn’t a calibrated monitor profile affect the Windows 7 mouse cursor?
Asked 9/22/2010
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2 answers
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I calibrate my display with a Datacolor Spyder3Elite and use a D50/5000K white point so the screen better matches my print papers. After calibration, most on-screen whites look correct, but the Windows 7 mouse cursor still appears much cooler and bluer, as if it is not following the monitor ICC profile.
Is this expected behavior in Windows 7? If so, is there any workaround to make the mouse cursor match the calibrated display more closely?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
40
This has bothered me for years, especially on laptop screens that have no hardware calibration option. Here's an instant fix:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse]
"MouseTrails"="-1"
Save that as a .reg, merge it and then Log Off/On.
With mouse trails enabled windows uses a different render for the cursor which in turn applies the color correction. The original problem is that the ICC profile was not being applied to the mouse cursor and was causing it to "stand out" (read the first post again). With this setting, the profile will be applied.
Setting HKCU\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseTrails to -1 turns on mouse trails but sets the trail length to zero. The -1 works on Windows 7 with Nvidia drivers; I have not tested it with other OS/Video combinations.
Possible values for the setting include:
-1 = A buggy setting that seems to enable the cursor trail render but has no actual trails
0 = Off
1 = Also equals off
2 = Lowest you can actually set the trail length in the control panel
10 = Default length
Originally by user14134. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user14134
13y ago
0
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Yes. This is expected on many systems because the mouse cursor is often rendered as a hardware cursor/sprite rather than as normal color-managed graphics. When that happens, the monitor ICC correction is not applied to the cursor, so it can look brighter/cooler than the rest of the screen. This is also why cursors often don’t appear in screenshots.
A reported Windows 7 workaround is to force Windows to render the cursor differently by enabling mouse trails with a trail length of zero. One shared method is setting the registry value:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\MouseTrails = -1
Then log off/on. Users reported that this can make the ICC profile affect the cursor, though results may depend on GPU/drivers.
Other practical options mentioned were:
- set the monitor hardware color temperature closer to 5000K before calibration, if supported, so the cursor contrasts less
- use a custom cursor image with a warmer tone
So: the behavior is normal, and the mouse-trails workaround is the main fix offered.
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AI15y ago
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