Spotlight

The Spotlight feature surrounds your mouse cursor with a circle of light, making it instantly visible on any background. It’s the most popular FriskyMouse feature and the perfect starting point for presentations.

How It Works

When enabled, a translucent, colored circle is drawn around the cursor position and follows it in real time. You control its appearance through three groups of settings:

1. Basic appearance: size, fill, outline, and opacity
2. Glow effects: 30 glow types organized into 5 categories (see the full catalog)
3. Crosshairs: optional crosshair lines through the center

Quick Start

1. Open FriskyMouse settings and navigate to the Spotlight tab.
2. Toggle the feature On.
3. Choose a glow effect that fits your presentation style.
4. Adjust size and color to match your screen and audience distance.

Tip

Use keyboard shortcuts to toggle the spotlight on and off during a presentation without opening the settings window. See Keyboard Shortcuts.

Size

Adjust the diameter of the spotlight circle.

• Default: 15 px
• Range: 5–80 px

For large displays or projectors, use a bigger size so the audience can track the cursor from the back of the room.

Fill

The solid area inside the spotlight shape.

• Enable Fill: toggle whether the interior is filled at all. When disabled, only the outline and/or glow are drawn.
• Fill Color: any RGB color (default: yellow).
• Opacity (0–100%, default: 75%): how transparent the fill is. Lower values let the content underneath show through; higher values make the cursor area stand out more.

Tip

Match the fill color to your presentation’s color scheme for a polished look. High-contrast colors (yellow, white) work best on dark backgrounds.

Outline

An optional border ring around the spotlight shape.

• Enable Outline: toggle the outline on or off (independent of Fill).
• Outline Color: independent of the fill color; useful for adding contrast (default: red).
• Outline Width: thickness of the outline stroke in pixels (default: 2 px).
• Outline Style: line pattern: Solid, Dash, Dot, Dash-Dot, Dash-Dot-Dot.

A popular combination is a semi-transparent fill paired with a solid outline. This maintains cursor visibility without obscuring content.

Glow

A soft radiance drawn around the spotlight. See Glow Effects for the 30 available glow types.

• Enable Glow: toggle the glow effect on or off.
• Glow Type: choose from 30 styles organized into 5 tiers.
• Glow Color: the primary color of the glow (default: Deep Sky Blue).
• Glow Color 2: the secondary color, used by gradient-based glow types like Two-Color Gradient (default: Orange).
• Glow Width: the radial extent of the glow around the spotlight (default: 10 px).
• Glow Opacity (0–100%, default: 80%): how visible the glow is.

Crosshairs

Crosshairs draw horizontal and vertical lines through the center of the spotlight, giving you precise positional reference. This is especially useful when aligning elements, pointing at specific UI controls, or doing pixel-level work. Crosshairs work with all glow types and are rendered on top of the glow effect.

• Enable / Disable: toggle crosshairs independently from the spotlight circle.

• Color: set the crosshair line color (can differ from the spotlight color).

• Thickness: adjust the line width for visibility.

• Length: control how far the crosshair lines extend from the cursor center.

• Opacity: set the transparency of the crosshair lines independently of the spotlight (0–100%).

• Outline Style: the dash pattern of the crosshair lines:

  Style	Appearance
  Solid	Continuous unbroken line
  Dash	Evenly spaced dashes
  Dot	Small dots
  Dash Dot	Alternating dash and dot
  Dash Dot Dot	Dash followed by two dots

• Line Cap Style: the shape drawn at each end of the crosshair arms:

  Style	Appearance
  None	Flat line end, no decoration (default)
  Arrow Anchor	Arrowhead pointing outward
  Diamond Anchor	Diamond shape at each line end
  Square Anchor	Square block at each line end
  Round Anchor	Rounded cap at each line end

Activation Mode

The activation shortcut can run in Toggle mode (press to flip on/off, default) or Hold mode (active only while held). Switch via the ComboBox next to the shortcut.

See Activation Mode for details.

Recommended Configurations

Scenario	Fill	Outline	Glow
Clean presentation	On (60%)	Off	Radial Aura (Classic)
Bold demo	On (80%)	On (solid, 3 px)	Neon Glow (Ring/Halo)
Subtle highlight	On (40%)	Off	Off
Minimal / text-only	Off	On (solid, 2 px)	Off

Learn More

• Glow Effects: the full catalog of all 30 glow types