Mouse Pointer Lag

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Level 1

8 points

Mouse Pointer Lag

Mouse pointer lag seems to be a perennial problem on macOS, and seems worse now in macOS Monterey. I have this constantly with wired and wireless mice on this machine under macOS. My Razer DeadAdder wired mouse became so unresponsive, I could no longer use it, and so converted to the Magic Mouse. But, besides being an atrocious design from the ergonomic standpoint, it failed to solve the problem. Because I have the magic keyboard on BT, I decided to switch to a Logitech mouse on its own dongle that is in the USB type-A port on the computer. Although this gave some improvement it is also lagging. For many purposes this makes my Mac Pro Desktop Tower computer nearly unusable. I have a Windows 11 Pro boot disk on this machine, and when running Windows the machine does not lag on any of the mice I have, showing that this is an OS problem, not a hardware problem. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to solve this?

Mac Pro, macOS 12.6

Posted on Jul 22, 2023 04:19 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

PAsherSil

Level 1

4 points

Aug 11, 2023 10:44 AM in response to Baharon

A mouse pointer should have one of the highest priorities in an OS and I feel this is no longer the case on macOS. I have had the same problem with everything from MagicMouse, Logitech, USB wired to trackpad, on both i9 (2019) and M1 MB Air.

Even IF its a software problem regarding antivirus (which I have on one but not the other) I dont see how it should be messing up the priorities.

And that's before I even get onto issues using a Wacom Tablet with Zoom :(

It's such a basic function - but for the last 2 years macOS has in this regard become unreliable and unusable for some tasks.

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Answer 2

John Galt

Level 10

153,490 points

Jul 24, 2023 01:10 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

This post is identical to another one I saw this morning, but can't find just now.

This is the one. I suspect our Hosts truncated this Discussion because it involves an unsupported hardware configuration.

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Answer 3

Aug 11, 2023 11:46 AM in response to PAsherSil

I don’t think I have experienced mouse lag in macOS, ever. I believe that if this were a widespread issue the crowd would be heard very loudly. This of course poses a terrible usability issue.

To my mind it seems far more likely to be a local issue, either due to driver problems or to conflict with other third party software.

Now lagging in a Zoom call is a different matter altogether. Network latency is likely to be a factor, perhaps compounding other existing issues. I used to teach classes of more than one hundred students during the pandemic using the iPad tethered to my mac and drawing with Apple Pencil and it worked very well.

If you are interested in troubleshooting this more deeply I suggest running the diagnostic program Etrecheck and posting its full report here using the additional text button below your message.

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Answer 4

Baharon Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 13, 2023 04:35 PM in response to John Galt

After many hours of troubleshooting with assistance from Logitech, which did not solve the problem, I returned the Logitech mouse for a full refund. I reinstalled the macOS on a new NVMe SSD and replaced the Logitech mouse with the prior Razer DeathAdder Essential Gamers Mouse and the problem vanished. No more jitter and no more lag. I am now playing Red Dead Redemption II on a 4K Dell G3223Q VRR monitor, and with AMD Radeon RX 6800, and getting frame rates averaging 96, while all graphics controls on high or ultra, for an incredably immersive panoramic experience. If you know RDR2, you will know what an amazing experience this is. And, yes, on a Mac Pro with a 15 year old architecture: Apple certainly got it right with this machine.

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