Mouse cursor turning to selection cursor preventing the clicking on links.

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Level 1

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Mouse cursor turning to selection cursor preventing the clicking on links.

This is on an older Intel MacBook Pro i9 system using a MagicMouse. The issue started after updating to Ventura 13.7.6 and affects the users' daily workflow. After the upgrade, the mouse cursor started changing to a selection cursor (i.e. arrow pointer to a | cursor) when hovering over links. This causes issues when attempting to click on meeting links in calendars or information links in about boxes. I do not see any setting that specifically controls this behavior in the GUI and I do not see any likely culprits in the defaults. I thought this behavior was controlled on an application level, but it appears to be more global. Any hints on what to pursue would be appreciated.

Posted on Aug 13, 2025 10:24 PM

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Answer 1

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D.I. Johnson

Level 7

31,703 points

Aug 13, 2025 11:12 PM in response to ideopathic

If a simple reboot of your Mac doesn’t fix things, see if the problem still happens in safe mode. Safe mode will often correct weird software behavior by forcing the OS to clear caches, do disk repair and other self-maintenance and housekeeping and temporarily disables third-party mods.

How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support

Does the same thing happen while in Safe mode?

You can exit safe mode by restarting your Mac normally, then reevaluate the problem.

If the problem remains after a safe boot, another thing you can try is to boot in recovery mode, launch Disk Utility and run the First Aid routine on the startup volumes and the drive device. If necessary, run the routine more than once until DU reports no errors.

To repair your startup drive you must be booted in recovery mode.

How to repair a Mac storage device with Disk Utility - Apple Support

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