View source for How To 'Enable' Mouse Cursor/Pointer on the AppleTV

== Pre-requirements ==

* Apple TV
* A Macintosh
* [[Install_System_Preferences | System Preferences]] installed on the Apple TV 
* [http://osx.iusethis.com/app/mouselocator MouseLocator] 
* [http://jamsoft.org/hosted_files/mac_cursor.zip jamsofts' OS X Mouse Cursor PNG]

== Step 1==
Download [http://www.2point5fish.com/ MouseLocator] and extract from the package the System Preferences panel. You have to mount the image, then you have to show the contents of <tt>Mouse Locator v1.1 Installer</tt> package (ctrl-clic > Show Package Contents) and then copy the file <tt>MouseLocator.prefPane</tt> from <tt>Contents/Resources/Distribution/</tt> to your Desktop.

Alternatively, download the MouseLocator.dmg file and copy it to the AppleTV. Mount it with the following command

 sudo hdiutil mount MouseLocator.dmg

and then copy the files from the mounted /Volumes/Mouse Locator v1.1 directory

== Step 2==
Now copy the file <tt>MouseLocator.prefPane</tt> to <tt>/Library/PreferencePanes</tt> on your Apple TV, if you dont have that folder, just create it.
(note: I had to copy it to <tt>~/Library/PreferencePanes</tt> in order for it to appear in System Preferences)

== Step 3==
Now you can copy <tt>MouseLocator.png</tt> to <tt>/Users/frontrow/Pictures</tt> on your Apple TV.

== Step 4==
Run [[Install_System_Preferences | System Preferences]], on your Apple TV and select Mouse Locator: select <tt>Turn on</tt> and put a check on <tt>Always Turn On</tt>. This will be extra fun as you can't see your mouse pointer to select the check-boxes and have to guess! Now, you should have a cursor. If you want to disable it you could just turn it off.

You can ssh in and run the following command at the -bash-2.05b$ prompt

  while true; do open ~/Library/PreferencePanes/MouseLocator.prefPane && sleep 3; done


What this will do is basically pop up the window every 3 seconds - keeping it almost always visible. Then you can enable the mouse pointer. Once that is done, terminate the above command by hitting Ctrl+c  (credit goes to theashworld )

As alternative for this script you can do [http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Enable_Kext_Loading "Enable Kext Loading"] . At least for me after loading Kext, System Preferences screen was continously stable.


You can select a hot-key to allow you to toggle the cursor on/off at your wish, so that the mouse locator won't show in movies played by NitoTV. In this case, don't check the Always Turn On.
[[Category:How-to]]

==Footnote==

An easy way to know where you click, if you use a VNC client, is to give the focus out of VNC (by clicking on the finder by example), and to get back over the VNC window.  Just move the pointer over what you want to click, click one time to give the focus to VNC, and click another time to send the click to the appleTV.--

[[User:Bagster|Bagster]] 17:46, 1 December 2007 (CET)

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Here are a few ssh commands that are helpful.

This command will open the System Preference directly to Mouse Locator Preference Panel.

   open ~/Library/PreferencePanes/MouseLocator.prefPane

If for some reason your Mouse Locator application dose not boot when you run Firefox or other Applications, like mine sometimes does, then use this command to start it. It should keep all your settings if you have already enable them.

   open ~/Library/PreferencePanes/MouseLocator.prefPane/Contents/Resources/MouseLocatorAgent.app

Now if your hot-key is not working to toggle the cursor on/off then just kill it by running. Or turn it back on by the former open command.

   kill $(ps ax | grep [M]ouseLocatorAgent | awk '{print $1}')

[[User:fcbRonaldinho|fcbRonaldinho]] 14:43, 6 January 2008