How To Enable Mouse Pointer Trails in Windows 10

A mouse pointer, also known as the cursor is a graphical icon which represents your pointing device's movements on your display. It allows the user to manipulate objects on the screen with a mouse, a touchpad or any other pointing device. In this article, we will see how to enable mouse pointer trails.

When the feature is enabled, it adds a trail behind the pointer. Users who lose the mouse cursor as they move it across the screen find it very useful. The trail improves the visibility of the mouse pointer in Windows 10.

You can use either the Mouse Properties applet or the Registry editor app to enable or disable mouse trails in Windows 10. Let's review both methods.

To enable Pointer Trails in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Navigate to Devices - Mouse.
3. On the right, click on the link Additional mouse options under the section Related settings.
4. In the Mouse Properties dialog, go to the Pointer Options tab.
5. Enable the option Display pointer trails under Visibility.
6. You can set the desired length of the pointer trails using the slider below the check box.

You are done. The option is now enabled.

When needed, the mouse pointer trails feature can be enabled with a Registry tweak. Here is how.

Enable the Mouse Pointer Trails feature with a Registry tweak

1. Open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key.

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

   See how to go to a Registry key with one click.

3. On the right, modify or create a new string (REG_SZ) value named MouseTrails.
4. Set its value data to a number between 2 (short) to 7 (long) for mouse pointer trails length.
5. To disable the feature, set the MouseTrails value to 0.
6. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account.

That's it.