Installing custom cursors on Windows

Every cursor pack on Font Loft ships as a folder of .cur (static) and .ani (animated) files — the same formats Windows has used since 1995. There is no installer, no browser extension, and no background process. You drop the files somewhere safe, then point Windows at them through the regular Mouse Properties control panel. The whole job takes about two minutes.

The two-minute version

  1. Click the Download from artist button on any pack page. You'll land on the original artist's page, where you can grab a ZIP.
  2. Unzip the pack to a folder you control — we recommend C:\Windows\Cursors\Font Loft\<pack-name>\. (Windows ships with a Cursors folder; just create a Font Loft subfolder inside it.)
  3. Press Win + R, type main.cpl, and hit Enter. The classic Mouse Properties dialog opens.
  4. Switch to the Pointers tab. Click Browse… for the cursor role you want to change, pick the matching file from your unzipped folder, and click Apply.
  5. Repeat for any other roles the pack provides. Click Save As… and name your scheme so you can swap between it and the Windows default later.

The proper version (saving a named scheme)

Windows organizes cursors into schemes — named bundles of files mapped to the seventeen cursor roles the OS knows about (Normal Select, Help Select, Working In Background, Busy, Precision, Text, Handwriting, Unavailable, Vertical Resize, Horizontal Resize, Diagonal Resize 1 & 2, Move, Alternate, Link, Person Select, Location Select, and Pin). If you save a scheme, you can switch between custom packs and the Windows default in two clicks instead of re-browsing every file.

To save a scheme: open Mouse Properties → Pointers tab, set every role you care about, then click Save As…, type a name (e.g. Font Loft Neon), and hit OK. From then on the scheme appears at the top of the dropdown. Click Delete to remove a scheme; deletion does not remove the underlying files.

Mapping cursor roles to pack files

Most packs follow a fairly standard naming convention. If you see a file like arrow.cur in the pack, it goes in the Normal Select role. hand.cur or link.cur goes in Link Select. text.cur goes in Text Select. busy.ani (an animated cursor) goes in Busy. working.ani goes in Working In Background. The four resize cursors (vert.cur, horz.cur, nesw.cur, nwse.cur) map to the four resize roles. move.cur goes in Move. cross.cur goes in Precision Select. If a pack has fewer files than there are roles, leave the remaining roles on the Windows default — they'll keep working normally.

Animated cursors and frame rate

Animated .ani files are basically a sequence of .cur frames with a small header describing playback speed. Windows handles them natively in every app, including fullscreen games, with one caveat: some older games override the system cursor entirely. If your animated busy spinner stops working inside a specific game, that's the game choosing to draw its own cursor, not Windows ignoring your scheme.

What about Windows 11?

Windows 11 changed the look of the modern Settings app but kept the classic Mouse Properties dialog intact. The fastest path on Windows 11 is the same Win+R → main.cpl shortcut described above. You can also reach it from Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Mouse → Additional mouse settings, which opens the same dialog.

One subtle difference on Windows 11: the OS now scales cursors based on your DPI setting and a new Mouse pointer size slider in Settings → Accessibility → Mouse pointer and touch. If a custom pack looks blurry on a 4K monitor, drop the pointer size to 1 — the pack will draw at its native resolution instead of being upsampled.

Uninstalling a pack

To revert to the Windows default scheme, open Mouse Properties → Pointers tab, pick Windows Default (system scheme) from the dropdown, and click Apply. To delete the actual files, just remove the folder you unzipped into. Cursor schemes are stored in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Cursors; if a deleted file is still referenced by a saved scheme you'll see a small warning the next time you open Mouse Properties — fix it by re-browsing or by deleting the scheme.

For a deeper look at how Windows draws the cursor through the DWM compositor, see our background notes on the Font Loft catalog.

Troubleshooting

"The cursor changes everywhere except inside this one app." Some apps — most fullscreen games, certain remote desktop clients, and a handful of accessibility tools — draw their own cursor instead of using the OS one. There is no fix from the cursor pack side. The system cursor will reappear the moment you alt-tab out of the app.

"My animated cursor freezes during a Zoom call." Screen-sharing tools sometimes capture cursors as static images for performance reasons. Your local cursor is still animating; it's just being captured as a single frame for the remote viewer.

"I want different cursors per app." Windows doesn't support that natively. There are third-party tools (CursorFX, CursorXP) that can do per-app cursors via DLL injection, but Font Loft doesn't recommend them — they require running a background process and drawing your cursor through user-space code, which can interfere with games' anti-cheat systems.

Quick install reference

Install any cursor pack on Windows in two minutes

Every pack on Font Loft ships as native .cur and .ani files — the same formats Windows has used since 1995. There is no installer, no browser extension, and no background process.

Windows 10

  1. Download the pack from the artist's source page and unzip it to C:\Windows\Cursors\<pack-name>\.
  2. Press Win+R, type main.cpl, and press Enter to open the classic Mouse Properties dialog.
  3. Switch to the Pointers tab. For each role (Normal Select, Link Select, Text, Busy, Precision…) click Browse and pick the matching .cur or .ani.
  4. Click Save As…, name your scheme, and hit Apply to lock it in across reboots.

Windows 11 (incl. 24H2)

  1. Open Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Mouse → Additional mouse settings, or use the same Win+R → main.cpl shortcut.
  2. On the Pointers tab, browse to your unzipped folder and assign each cursor file to its matching role.
  3. If a 4K display upscales the pack, drop the Mouse pointer size slider in Settings → Accessibility → Mouse pointer and touch to 1 so cursors render at native resolution.
  4. Save as a named scheme — Windows 11 keeps schemes in HKCU\Control Panel\Cursors so you can swap them any time.