Losing track of the cursor

I find it hard to see the cursor on my iMac’s display, although I’m happy with its resolution and clarity. How can I improve that to edit text more easily?

There are two separate issues here: the floating pointer controlled by your mouse or trackpad, and the text insertion cursor, which shows where the next character will appear in your document.

Making the pointer larger is easy: go to > System Preferences > Accessibility, select Display on the left, and drag its ‘Cursor size’ control rightwards until you reach the preferred size you want to set it at.

Changing the size and appearance of the text insertion cursor isn’t set system–wide, and we don’t know of a utility that changes this more generally. Some editors offer a choice, including a flashing block that should be more visible than a thin vertical bar.

Enlarge the pointer using the ‘Cursor size’ control in System Preferences’ Accessibility pane. In this place, you can also set the pointer to become larger when you shake it.

Some apps offer a setting in their preferences to use a more visible text insertion cursor — here, Nisus Writer Pro (below, left) and Terminal (below, right).