Mouse Spotlight — Cursor Highlighter for Screen Recording

About

Make your mouse cursor impossible to miss in screen recordings, tutorials, demos, and live presentations.

Mouse Spotlight overlays a customizable highlight on your cursor that follows you across every webpage — so your viewers always know exactly where you're pointing.

━━━ WHY USE IT ━━━

- Recording a tutorial? Viewers won't lose track of your cursor.
- Teaching a class? Students can see exactly what you're clicking.
- Demoing a product? Add cinematic click ripples that make every action feel intentional.
- Pair-programming or screensharing? No more "the one I'm hovering over."

━━━ FEATURES ━━━

🎨 4 CURSOR SHAPES
  • Solid circle — classic bold highlight
  • Ring — clean outline that doesn't cover content
  • Spotlight — soft radial glow for a cinematic feel
  • Crosshair — precise targeting indicator

🌈 FULL COLOR CONTROL
  • 8 preset colors + unlimited custom picker
  • Separate colors for cursor, click ripples, and click trails
  • Adjustable border width and color

📐 PRECISE SIZING
  • Size from 10px to 200px
  • Opacity from 5% to 100%
  • Glow intensity from 0 to 80px

💫 CLICK EFFECTS
  • Animated ripple on every click
  • Different colors for left vs right click
  • Optional fading dot trail that shows where you've been clicking

🎬 RECORDING-READY EXTRAS
  • Smooth-follow easing for a cinematic lag effect
  • Hide the native cursor so only your custom highlight shows
  • Live preview in the popup — see changes before you record

⌨️ KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
  • Alt+Shift+H — Toggle highlighter on/off
  • Alt+Shift+C — Toggle click effects
  • Customizable in chrome://extensions/shortcuts

━━━ PRIVACY ━━━

Mouse Spotlight does not collect, send, or share any data. All settings are stored locally in your browser via Chrome sync storage. The extension never communicates with any external server. No accounts, no tracking, no analytics.

━━━ HOW IT WORKS ━━━

1. Click the extension icon to open the control panel
2. Toggle the highlighter on (top-right switch)
3. Customize shape, color, size, and click effects across three tabs
4. Start your screen recorder — the highlight follows your cursor on every webpage

━━━ NOTES ━━━

The highlight only appears on regular web pages. Chrome doesn't allow extensions to inject scripts on its internal pages (chrome://, the Chrome Web Store, the New Tab page, etc.), so the highlighter won't be visible there. For recording those screens, use a system-level cursor highlighter.

The highlight uses pointer-events: none, so it never interferes with clicks, hover states, or page behavior.

━━━ PERMISSIONS EXPLAINED ━━━

- storage — saves your color and size preferences across browser sessions
- activeTab + host permissions — required to draw the highlight overlay on the page you're currently viewing
- scripting — required by Manifest V3 to inject the cursor overlay