Cursor Lock is a utility program that confines the mouse cursor to a selected area on the screen. This is most useful in multi-monitor setups, addressing a common oversight in some applications (mostly games) whereby they allow the mouse cursor to drift into other unwanted screens. In video games, this can also lead to minimizing the game window if the cursor has drifted into another screen and the mouse is clicked accidentally. Cursor Lock can also overcome cursor drifting problems in windowed applications and games.
Here’s a list of games that Cursor Lock is reported or confirmed to fix.
Features
- Locking only when focused–requires no special user interaction, nor does it interfere with task switching between screens
- Uses a superior method of capturing the cursor compared to other solutions (e.g. MouseTrap)
- Ability to open one program and lock another allows Cursor Lock to work well with launcher programs
- Can confine the cursor to window borders, in addition to a whole screen
- Customizable hotkeys allow for complete control of locking in any situation
- Alternate locking modes that run in the background for full user control and special circumstances
- Intuitive GUI support program for quick setup of Cursor Lock shortcuts
- Integrated help system for shortcut setup program
- Highly optimized and efficient locking program that uses practically no memory or CPU
Tutorial
Screenshots
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- 2.6 Shortcut Tab on Windows 7
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- 2.6 Hotkeys Tab
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- 2.6 Defaults Tab
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- Version 2.6 Performance
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- 2.5 alpha on Win98
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- 2.0 on WinXP
Download
148K
Contribute
via Paypal
If Cursor Lock has fixed a game or two for you, consider supporting development with a donation.
Or you can help by translating Cursor Lock into one of the following languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, or Arabic. Download the following file for more information.
Cursor Lock Translation Template (1926 downloads)Changelog
2.6.1 – 9/15/13
=GUI(1.6.1)
-settings are now saved to config when creating a shortcut
-improved hotkey entry
=Lock(1.2.2)
-performance improvements
2.6 – 7/3/13
=GUI(1.6)
-support for Windows Vista/7 and UAC
-cleaned up help text
-added support for translations
-icons and other UI improvements
-moved context-based help to tooltips
-converted project to .Net 3.5
-logging is now disabled by default
-updated links
2.5.2 – 5/9/12
=GUI(1.5.1)
-fixed a bug with creating shortcuts for user strict mode
2.5.1 – 10/10/09
=Lock(1.2.1)
-fixed a bug with argument passing where the program executable wasn’t given as the first argument
2.5 – 12/14/08
=Lock(1.2)
-added user and strict user modes
-added window and window interior lock regions
-code cleanup
-minor bug fixes
=GUI(1.5)
-redesigned layout to be more intuitive
-added settings for the new switches
-added about tab
-added test and self-test functions
2.11 – 1/2/08
=GUI(1.21)
-fixed a rare bug that occured when creating shortcuts to some programs with invalid filename characters in their program name
2.1 – 11/27/07
=Lock(1.1)
-Optimized the polling code to reduce the CPU usage to inpercievably small amounts while the program to lock still has focus
-at least 10x less CPU
2.0 – 11/11/07
=GUI(1.2)
-removed the lock code and set shortcut targets to the new lock app
-made sure any shortcut arguments with spaces have quotes around them. \” escapes
-added the /s switch
-removed memory minimize (/m) switch, since the new lock app doesn’t support it
=Lock(1.0)
-initial release – complete C++ rewrite of the command-line driven lock monitor
1.1 – 10/22/07
-added the /s argument, which locks the cursor to the current screen
1.0 – 2/12/06
-added hotkeys for toggling lock and exiting the lock program; should work with most keys except F10, Tab, and PrintScreen. Non-standard US keys will probably appear as a number.
-added arguments parameter for opening programs.
-added lock program parameter, allows for opening a program and locking another and locking without opening.
-added hotkey override parameter.
-better checking for valid text parameters.
-better log formatting for time.
-added help text for new elements
0.9: Initial Release
I’ve been using this for Overwatch and it’s saved my life because I get really bad simulation sickness and need to play in Windowed Mode. However, as of the most recent update to Overwatch, the cursor is now able to drift out of the window, though it does quickly snap back. I’m not sure what is causing this or how to fix it, any advice? Thank you so much for this software!
Increase the poll rate?
That seems to have fixed the problem functionally, but the mouse is still able to exit the boundaries of the screen (if only for a single millisecond). Ah well, it works fine enough – thank you for the reply!
How can I lock the mouse pointer to a custom area on the screen ?
Dude you are awesome fixed Battletech for me on my multimonitor setup, wish i’d known about this earlier will fix so many games <3
I have four monitors but I don’t use them all, all the time. It’s annoying to lose the mouse cursor to a monitor which is turned off so I’d like to be able to restrict the mouse to the monitors which are in use. There are plenty of solutions to restrict the mouse cursor to any particular single monitor but I want it to be able to move the cursor across multiple monitors and use hotkeys to toggle which displays are included.
Makes sense, but Cursor Lock doesn’t support this. Maybe in a future version.
I’m using SoftTH with LoL and it disables the native screenlock, and Cursor Lock fixes it beautifully so thanks! Just wanted to point out that my Panda Antivirus detected both exes as viruses. I assume it’s a false positive, probably similar code as viruses to be able to hook into other apps? Removed them from quarantine and works fine for me but might push back some users. Just as an fyi if you’re able to do something about it.
Yeh, virus scanners do that on occasion. Not really worth it for me to worry about it. False positives should be on the virus scanners to fix, anyways. But thanks for the report.