Cursor not shown in recorded video

[malwilley]

Hello! I'm a big fan of this project, it fills a huge gap in the space and will be incredibly useful to me!

I'm running into an issue where my recorded videos do not appear to have any cursor data recorded, despite saying it does.

See this video of the editor (recorded with other software). I was clicking around with my mouse, but the cursor is not visible. Under "Recording info" it says "Cursor Data: Yes" and I have the cursor toggled on.

CleanShot.2026-04-03.at.21.03.48.mp4

Other info that might be useful:
macOS Tahoe 26.4
Permissions have been granted for accessibility and screen recording

[jkuri]

Hello! I was not able to reproduce the bug that mouse cursor would not be visible neither in display, area or window mode. When recording the default system cursor is hidden but it does store cursor coordinates, style and clicks so you can manipulate that later in editor.

Can you please provide me some additional steps or detailed information how did you performed the recording?

[malwilley]

I've tried installing this on my macbook (running the latest version of Sequoia), and with the same exact steps, it does record the cursor correctly. However, despite multiple tries with my m4 mac mini on Tahoe I cannot get it to work.

When I get some time I will try to dig into this a bit more. Unfortunately I don't have any leads yet on what the disconnect might be.

[m13v]

the Tahoe vs Sequoia difference is interesting. macOS 26 changed how CGEvent cursor data is reported through ScreenCaptureKit. on Sequoia, SCStream delivers cursor metadata in the CMSampleBuffer attachments automatically if you set showsCursor on the configuration. on Tahoe, Apple tightened the ScreenCaptureKit API behavior and cursor metadata requires the accessibility permission to be granted to the specific binary, not just the parent app. since the user confirmed accessibility permission is granted, the issue might be that the permission is granted to the .app bundle but the actual recording process is a helper binary with a different identity. try logging the cursor attachment keys from the CMSampleBuffer during capture on Tahoe to see if they are present but empty vs entirely missing. if entirely missing, it's a permission/identity mismatch. if present but empty, it's more likely a Tahoe API behavioral change.

[m13v]

our ScreenCaptureKit setup that handles cursor metadata and the Tahoe permission changes: https://github.com/m13v/macos-session-replay/blob/main/Sources/SessionReplay/ScreenCaptureService.swift

includes the SCStreamConfiguration for cursor capture and the TCC preflight checks that detect permission mismatches across process identities.

[jkuri]

That's interesting. I actually never tested this on Sequoia, only on Tahoe (currently I am running 26.4) and I am still not able to reproduce cursor metadata not being recorded or captured.

One thing that comes to my mind is, if you toggle "System Cursor" to off and select custom cursor is it then displayed? For system cursors I render them from PDFs, they are located in:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/cursors/. Can you please check if that folder or location for some reason doesn't exist on your machine?

Also, please check some recorded project cursor-metadata.json file and check manually if coordinates are stored inside. Projects are stored in ~/Reframed/ by default.