Cannot find the mouse cursor? Follow these steps to enable the ripple effect on the button press to discover the missing mouse pointer.

Windows uses white color with a black border because of its default mouse cursor. On the large screen or on a multi-monitor setup, it can be sometimes difficult to find where the mouse cursor is. This is especially true when there are multiple windows or when you are writing. Often, you may spend more time than you want to accept just to find in which the mouse pointer is situated.

Thinking of this exact situation and to aid in terms of easy access, Windows has a neat feature that shows a ripple effect around mouse cursor when you press the Ctrl key. This will make it easy to locate the mouse cursor regardless of how big your screen is or the number of monitors you have. Within this quick post, let me demonstrate the entire process of enabled the ripple effect accessibility feature to easily locate a button pointer in Windows 10.

The steps shown below works in Windows 7 and Windows 8 too.

Steps to Highlight Mouse Cursor with Ripple Effect

These are the steps you should follow to enable the ripple effect to create mouse pointer easy to locate.

Open the Start menu.
Click on the "Settings" icon around the left side to spread out the Settings app.
In the Settings app, visit the "Devices → Mouse" page.
Click on the "Additional mouse options" link under Related Settings.
Go to the "Pointer Options" tab in the Mouse Properties window.
Select "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key" checkbox.
Click "Apply" and "Ok" buttons to changes.

That's all. From now on, to locate the mouse pointer, just press the Ctrl key in your keyboard. If you do that, Windows highlights the mouse cursor having a simple ripple effect around it. This will make it easy to find the mouse pointer. You can see how it looks like in the GIF image below.

Disable Mouse Cursor Ripple Effect

If you no more need the ripple effect around the mouse pointer or maybe it's too distracting, you can disable it. Listed here are the steps to achieve that.

Open the Settings app.
Go towards the "Devices → Mouse" page.
Click on the "Additional mouse options".
Go to the "Pointer Options" tab.
Uncheck the "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key" checkbox.
Save changes by clicking on the "Ok" button.

There you have it. This can disable the ripple effect and you'll no longer view it whenever you press the Ctrl key. If you ever need the feature again, you can just go through the same steps as shown in the first section.