Is your Mac’s pointer disappearing mysteriously? It is likely to be Universal Control

Universal Control extends your mouse, trackpad, trackball, keyboard, and different enter units throughout a number of Macs and iPads that you’ve got logged in to the identical iCloud account. Put your units close to one another, and you may seamlessly mouse from one display screen to a different and use your Mac to handle enter on an iPad or one other Mac.

But you may run right into a complicated situation for those who neglect that you’ve got Universal Control on and your units aren’t that shut collectively. Recently, each I and a colleague had the identical thriller: our cursor stored leaving our display screen. What unusual journey was it on? It turned out that it had visited one other Mac we had lively in a special a part of the home.

This scenario solely occurs often as a result of it requires a number of situations are met:

• Both Macs are unlocked and lively.
• They’re inside a number of ft of one another.
• Universal Control’s “Push through the edge of a display to connect a nearby Mac or iPad” setting is enabled (see under).

In each my and my buddy’s case, our Macs have been dozens of ft aside—mine was a complete flooring away—but Universal Control nonetheless thought of them shut sufficient. And each of us additionally usually have our Macs allow their lock screens or sleep when not in use for an affordable interval. We occurred to hit a window by which the 2 Macs have been unlocked and determined they have been shut sufficient to commerce inputs.

You can stop this situation from occurring if it turns into a trouble to you by selecting  > Sleep or  > Lock Screen from the Mac you don’t need to be utilizing.

You can even disable the setting in System Preferences > Displays in Universal Control famous above, “Push through…,” and the one under it, “Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad,” to stop automated connections. Then, to connect with a close-by Mac (or iPad), click on Add Display within the Displays desire pane and select the opposite system below the Link Keyboard and Mouse part.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a query submitted by Macworld reader Jeff.

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