Stillward DisplayStop the mouse slipping onto your second monitor in games
You flick the camera, the cursor leaves the game, and a click lands on the desktop of the other screen. The game drops to the background mid-fight. Here is why, and how to keep the mouse where it belongs.
Why it happens
In exclusive fullscreen a game usually holds the cursor itself, so the problem never appears. In borderless or windowed mode - which most people use, because alt-tab is instant - the game is just a large window, and the cursor is free to walk off its edge onto the next monitor. Some games confine it, many do not, and strategy and point-and-click games, where the cursor is always visible, suffer most.
Why the usual fixes fall short
Some games have a lock cursor option of their own, and many do not. Switching to exclusive fullscreen keeps the cursor in, but brings back slow alt-tab and a black flash every time you look away. Windows itself has no setting for it.
Keep the cursor inside the game automatically
Stillward Display can hold the pointer inside the game window in two ways:
- For every game, with no setup: one switch in the settings, off until you turn it on, keeps the cursor inside any game that has taken a whole monitor.
- For one game, as part of a preset: turn on “keep the mouse inside” in the game's preset, together with whatever else the preset does - your chat on the other monitor, your headphones on.
The lock lets go the moment you alt-tab or anything else comes to the front, so you are never trapped, and it comes back when you return to the game. On its own it only ever lets go of a lock it made: a game that confines the cursor itself is left to do so.
Is it safe with anti-cheat?
It uses the same documented Windows function a game would use to confine its own cursor, called from outside the game. Nothing is injected into the game and nothing touches its graphics or its memory, which is what anti-cheat systems look for.