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Cursor Highlighter - Spotlight & Click Effects icon

Cursor Highlighter - Spotlight & Click Effects

Highlight your cursor with a colorful ring and click ripple effects. Perfect for presentations, screen recordings, and demos.

Version
3.0.2

This one is built but not on a store yet. The page is here so you can see what it does.

In a recording, nobody can tell where your pointer is until you've already clicked. On a shared screen it's worse — you say "this button here" and half the call is looking somewhere else. This draws a colored ring around the cursor on the page you're showing, leaves a ripple where you click, and can dim everything outside a circle around the pointer. Color, size and opacity are set in the popup, and Alt+H turns it on and off mid-sentence.

When you'd reach for it

  • Recording a screencast or tutorial

    The ring is drawn inside the page, so it shows up in whatever captures that tab. Its diameter runs from 10 to 80 pixels, the border thickness scales with the size, and a soft glow in the same color sits underneath it. Each click adds a ripple that expands to three times the ring size and fades out over about six-tenths of a second, which gives a viewer something to follow when nothing else on screen moved.

  • Presenting on a call or a projector

    Spotlight mode adds a window-sized overlay that stays transparent in a circle around the pointer and darkens toward the edges, so the region you're pointing at is the only bright part of the page. The circle's radius is three times the ring size, so widening the ring widens the lit area. Both the ring and the overlay ignore clicks, so you keep scrolling, typing and clicking normally underneath them.

  • Switching it off between segments

    Alt+H toggles the effect from the keyboard, which matters when you're talking and don't want to open a popup. Settings live in Chrome sync storage and every open tab reacts to a change immediately, so you can adjust one window and keep demoing in another. In the popup, pick one of six preset colors or use the color input for an exact value, then drag the size and opacity sliders while watching the live preview circle.

Permissions & privacy

storageSaves your settings and data in the browser's own storage, on this device.
webNavigationNotices when a tab moves to a new page.
tabsCan see the titles and addresses of your open tabs.
<all_urls>Every site — because it has to work on whatever page you're on.

It runs only the code shipped inside the package — no remote code is fetched.

Questions people ask

How do I highlight my mouse cursor in Chrome for a screen recording?

Install it and the ring starts following your pointer on ordinary http and https pages, with a ripple on each click. Because it is drawn into the page itself, it is captured by tab and screen recording the same way page content is. It does not follow your cursor over the browser toolbar, other applications, or the desktop.

Can I change the color, size and opacity?

Yes, all three are in the popup: six preset swatches plus a standard color input, a size slider from 10 to 80 pixels, and an opacity slider from 10 to 100 percent. A preview circle at the bottom updates as you drag so you can judge it before switching back to the page. Values are saved in Chrome sync storage and applied to open tabs right away.

What exactly does spotlight mode do?

It dims the page everywhere except a circle centered on your pointer, fading to roughly 60 percent black at the edges of the window. The lit circle moves with the cursor and its radius is three times the ring diameter. It is a separate overlay from the ring, toggled on its own switch, and like the ring it lets clicks and scrolling pass through to the page.

Why doesn't the highlight show up on some pages?

The page script is registered for http and https pages only, so browser pages such as chrome:// settings, the extension gallery, the new tab page and local files are out of reach. On a page where it does run, the ring stays hidden until the pointer moves, and hides again when the pointer leaves the document. If the effect is off — from the popup toggle or from Alt+H — nothing is drawn at all.

What permissions does it declare, and what is each for?

The manifest declares storage, tabs and webNavigation, plus host access to all sites. Storage holds the five settings in Chrome sync storage — on/off, ring color, size, opacity and the spotlight flag — which is how a change made in one window reaches your other open tabs. Tabs and webNavigation give the extension tab and page-load events, so the effect can be applied again after a navigation instead of vanishing when you click through to the next page. Host access covers all sites because the ring has to be drawn on whichever page you are presenting, including one you open for the first time mid-demo.

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