In-home streaming invisible cursor FIX!

[Spyderborg]

I am running in-home streaming on a headless PC to my laptop, and in many games I was having an issue where my cursor was invisible, making it nearly impossible to play. A Valve employee confirmed here:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/1/540738052135928090/
that it is an issue with Windows 10 hiding the mouse cursor when no mouse is plugged into the machine. Every topic I found always ended with the OP saying they fixed it simply by plugging a mouse into the host PC.

For me, however, I do not have a spare mouse handy, and it seems asinine to have a mouse dedicated to being a "dummy" just to be able to play games. So I started trying stuff out on my own, and I am very glad to have found a solution!

1) Search "mouse key" in the Start menu and click the result reading "Change mouse key settings"

2) Under the "Mouse Keys" section, turn on "Use numeric keypad to move mouse around the screen"

3) Launch the on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows, click the "Options" key in the lower left, and check "Turn on numeric keypad." Turn on NumLock.

4) The on-screen keyboard doesn't need to stay open while the game is running, so you can close it. You should now be able to use your mouse while streaming from a headless PC.

I hope this helps someone; I sure wish someone had figured this out before.

[DirtyWasteGash]

You sir are amazing, Me and a friend just managed to trick the steam client into opening the host systems start menu and using the keyboard managed to turn this setting on remotely. hahaha

[dr00p]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ microsoft ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell

[dr00p]

didn't work for me

[luudaigiang]

This is the only way that fixes no mouse cursor while streaming with Steam Link. Thank you a lot!

[McFe]

issue still persists and this still works! thank you so much!

[Potato]

nice!! it still works hehe! thanks a lot!!

[RoiRoi]

Thanks for posting this! Always set up an old gaming PC for in-home streaming and this was killing me

[Richard]

Thank you very much sir, I went on vacation and I wanted to play something and somehow I can't do it without a mouse 😄

[Aeth]

Worked! Thank you so much!

[Powermate]

Hey, i stumbled upon your post when looking for the same solution and yours sadly didn't work for me so i tried something else and it works very well and there is no need for me to use the numpad to move the mouse + its visible.

1. Type "change the appearance of the mouse pointer when moving" in your search bar on Windows 10 and click on the Setting that is given to you, it should open up a small window.

2. On the Visibility check the box "Mouse Trail" or "Trail" (Im not sure what it's called, im using a different language) and the mouse cursor should now be visible on your other screen your're streaming to.

This might or might not work for others, but for me it worked. You also might want to decrease the mouse trail to the lowest possible point if you don't like seeing the trail. You will still see a bit of it, but you will be able to see the cursor with that.

[Exotic Papa Panda]

So I needed to to a couple of extra steps to get this working since my cursor disappeared whenever I unplugged my mouse after toggling the setting on. Here are the extra steps in case anyone else is having problems.

From https://superuser.com/questions/1129210/no-mouse-cursor-when-no-physical-mouse-device-plugged-in

The next main thing to get is that the act of physically removing a mouse is what causes windows to hide the cursor. Even if you get the Mouse Keys config right, as soon as you physically unplug the mouse the cursor will probably disappear.

The only way to make it re-appear using Mouse Keys is to Disable -> Re-Enable the entire Mouse Keys system, ie method #1 above. Just toggling it with Num-Lock won't work.

The trick is this has to be done after you've unplugged your mouse.

So:

Completely Disable Mouse Keys in Settings.
Unplug any pointing devices
Enable Mouse Keys in Settings.

You can use tab and arrow keys to navigate to the correct ui without a mouse. Once you've highlighted the Mouse Keys On/Off toggle use spacebar to toggle on/off.

[Lahutaro]

You're the best, thanks a lot!

[Immortal_hoodi]

On laptop for remote play. Had a fn key+del(ins) mouse offset

[daswild228]

引用自 Spyderborg：

I am running in-home streaming on a headless PC to my laptop, and in many games I was having an issue where my cursor was invisible, making it nearly impossible to play. A Valve employee confirmed here:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/1/540738052135928090/
that it is an issue with Windows 10 hiding the mouse cursor when no mouse is plugged into the machine. Every topic I found always ended with the OP saying they fixed it simply by plugging a mouse into the host PC.

For me, however, I do not have a spare mouse handy, and it seems asinine to have a mouse dedicated to being a "dummy" just to be able to play games. So I started trying stuff out on my own, and I am very glad to have found a solution!

1) Search "mouse key" in the Start menu and click the result reading "Change mouse key settings"

2) Under the "Mouse Keys" section, turn on "Use numeric keypad to move mouse around the screen"

3) Launch the on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows, click the "Options" key in the lower left, and check "Turn on numeric keypad." Turn on NumLock.

4) The on-screen keyboard doesn't need to stay open while the game is running, so you can close it. You should now be able to use your mouse while streaming from a headless PC.

I hope this helps someone; I sure wish someone had figured this out before.

After some horrendous google recommendations, this by far was the easiest solution. Thank you!

[ttoillenoj]

引用自 Spyderborg：

I am running in-home streaming on a headless PC to my laptop, and in many games I was having an issue where my cursor was invisible, making it nearly impossible to play. A Valve employee confirmed here:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/1/540738052135928090/
that it is an issue with Windows 10 hiding the mouse cursor when no mouse is plugged into the machine. Every topic I found always ended with the OP saying they fixed it simply by plugging a mouse into the host PC.

For me, however, I do not have a spare mouse handy, and it seems asinine to have a mouse dedicated to being a "dummy" just to be able to play games. So I started trying stuff out on my own, and I am very glad to have found a solution!

1) Search "mouse key" in the Start menu and click the result reading "Change mouse key settings"

2) Under the "Mouse Keys" section, turn on "Use numeric keypad to move mouse around the screen"

3) Launch the on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows, click the "Options" key in the lower left, and check "Turn on numeric keypad." Turn on NumLock.

4) The on-screen keyboard doesn't need to stay open while the game is running, so you can close it. You should now be able to use your mouse while streaming from a headless PC.

I hope this helps someone; I sure wish someone had figured this out before.

Thank you from 2024!