How to fix white glow or cursor artifacts on dark mode with MacBook Pro?

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Level 1

4 points

How to fix white glow or cursor artifacts on dark mode with MacBook Pro?

I'm experiencing strange cursor artifacts on my new MacBook Pro M4. When I move the mouse around, I notice light or cloudy effects around the cursor, but this issue is exclusive to dark mode; light mode works perfectly fine.

Has anyone else experienced this? Are there any permanent fixes? You can think of it as a glow or cloudiness around the cursor when moving it even slightly too fast.

Once the issue got so bad that there were weird white glows when I scrolled, I fixed it by toggling my refresh rate. I also turned off "Automatically Adjust Brightness."

The issue seems to be gone for now, but there is still some glow around my mouse cursor, although it's more visible when the background is dark. This is only visible on dark backgrounds.

Is this an issue with my display? I only bought my MacBook 3-4 months ago, and there have been no other incidents so far.

Device: M4 MacBook Pro, 16 GB, 1 TB.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: white glow around trackpad cursor

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Aug 27, 2025 03:32 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 27, 2025 03:40 PM in response to aejanjua

aejanjua wrote:

I'm experiencing strange cursor artifacts on my new MacBook Pro M4. When I move my mouse around, I see light or cloudy effects following the cursor, but only in dark mode. Light mode works perfectly fine.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any permanent fixes?

You can think of it as a glow or cloudiness around the cursor when moving it even slightly too fast. Once it got so worse that there were weird white glows when I scrolled.

I fixed it by toggling my refresh rate. I also turned my "Automatically Adjust Brightness" off.

The issue seems to be gone for now but there is still some glow around my my mouse cursor.

This is only visible on dark backgrounds. Is this an issue with my display?

Did you try turning off the High Dynamic Range and compare your results

>System Settings>Display

ref: Play HDR video on Mac - Apple Support

you can Call Customer Support (800) MY–APPLE (800–692–7753)

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,196 points

Aug 29, 2025 09:42 AM in response to aejanjua

In Dark mode, it is normal to have a black arrow with white trim around it. In System Settings > Accessibility > Display panel you can set the Pointer outline color from the default white to any color you want including black. The latter completely eliminates any white outline around the mouse pointer. I don't recommend setting this to black as it makes the mouse pointer simply disappear against dark background objects — unless you change the Pointer fill color to something that stands out like Red.

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