MacOS – Jittery macOS mouse cursor when hovering over links

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I'm experiencing a jittery/buggy/flickering mouse cursor when moving my mouse over hyperlinks.

gif of this problem in slow-mo

This occurs in both Safari and Chrome. It also occurs in other non-hyperlink instances of the mouse cursor changing, such as hovering over the drag handle when resizing Finder columns.

Every time the mouse transitions from the hyperlink pointer to the arrow pointer, the arrow pointer briefly visibly flashes in the wrong position before correcting itself.

This is in macOS 10.15 Catalina on my new 16" MacBook Pro with AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB GPU, provided by work and with a variety of software installed.

I now notice I'm also experiencing it on a Mid 2015 15" MacBook Pro running Catalina with the AMD Radeon R9 M370X 2 GB. I don't believe this computer used to have this problem, prior to upgrading to Catalina.

This occurs 100% of the time when the discrete GPU is active. Namely:

  • Any time an external display is connected.
  • If "Automatic graphics switching" is toggled off, it will reproduce on the MacBook's display.

The issue has been tested and occurs using the onboard laptop Trackpad, external Magic Trackpad, and an IBM TrackPoint. It is unrelated to input device or tracking speed.

Reproduction steps:

  1. Hover mouse above a hyperlink. (Shows "Mickey Mouse glove" pointer.)
  2. Move mouse pointer off the hyperlink so that cursor changes to the arrow pointer.
  3. Arrow pointer initially flashes at the "top left" position of the mouse bounding box for 1 frame.
  4. Arrow pointer then flashes back to its true position, pointing at the same pixels that the hyperlink glove was originally pointing.

When I create a screen recording via QuickTime, the mouse glitch is not visible in the recording.

Here is an iPhone video of my Mac's screen demonstrating the issue:

gif of this problem in action

Relevant section in slo-mo:

gif of this problem in slow-mo

This is driving me nuts. On link-heavy pages, moving the mouse across the screen results in a dizzying blur of pointer motion. Middle-clicking a link also produces a similar jitter.

I've reported this to Apple via their Feedback Reporter:

FB8452310 – GPU causes mouse cursor glitch on 16" MacBook Pro

This bug is also mentioned here:

Best Answer

So happy to hear I'm not the only one with this issue. Bought a new MacBook Pro 16 inch earlier this year in May, having that issue since.

  • After I bought it, I noticed the issue. Contacted Apple, told me to send it in for repair or exchange it for a new one at the retailer. So I replaced it. Brand new MacBook, same issue (however only after logging in with my Apple ID).
  • We're now deep into August and I've been in contact with several people at Apple since May. To no avail. We're now trying to escalate the issue to other departments, but not sure how long this will all take. The general comment they've made is "that the resolution might come in the form of an update, so keep an eye out on that"..

Some things I've noticed that might be helpful for others to know:

  • At first I thought the issue was with external displays. But after further debugging it seems the issue has to do with my GPU (AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB). The reason it seems the issue has to do with an external display is that the MacBook will switch from the embedded Intel UHD Graphics card to the better GPU when plugging in certain displays.
  • You can try the above by opening something like Final Cut Pro without an external display plugged in. The issue will then appear since the MacBook switches to the other GPU. You can also verify this by disabling "Automatic graphics switching" in the "Energy Saver" settings.
  • A clean install doesn't fix the issue. It also doesn't seem to be a hardware issue since the problem appeared on two separate MacBook Pro's.

I'll update the answer when I hear back from Apple. If anyone else has more info, glad to know.

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