Cursor disappeared on Acer laptop

The trackpad still moves you around, you can still click — you just cannot see where the pointer is. Specific to Acer because of how their function keys are laid out. Three fixes, in order of likelihood.

Fix 1 — Press Fn + F7 (cures about half of all cases)

Acer maps the touchpad enable/disable toggle to Fn + F7 on most Aspire, Swift, and Nitro laptops. It is also extremely easy to hit by accident when reaching for F7 alone. The function key has a small touchpad-with-a-slash icon on it.

If you have an external mouse plugged in, you can use it to check whether the cursor is actually missing or just stuck off-screen — wiggle the external mouse and the cursor should appear. If it does not, the cursor really is hidden. Press Fn+F7 once. It should reappear.

Some Acer models use F6 or F8 instead. Look across your function row for the touchpad icon.

Fix 2 — Toggle "Hide cursor while typing"

Windows has a setting that hides the cursor while you are actively typing. On most machines it works correctly — the cursor reappears the moment you move the mouse — but on some Acer models it can fail to come back, leaving the cursor invisible until you toggle the setting off.

Open Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Mouse → Additional mouse settings → Pointer Options tab. Find "Hide pointer while typing". Untick it. Click OK.

If you want to keep the feature on most of the time, you can rely on Fn+F7 above to recover from the bug, but turning the setting off is more reliable.

Fix 3 — Reload the touchpad driver

If the cursor is still missing after the above:

Press Win + X, then M to open Device Manager.
Expand Mice and other pointing devices.
Right-click your touchpad entry (often "ELAN Input Device", "Synaptics TouchPad" or "I2C HID Device") → Disable device.
Wait three seconds.
Right-click again → Enable device.

The cursor should reappear immediately.

If none of the above worked

Less common but possible:

The cursor is on a second monitor. Press Win+P to check; if you accidentally extended display to a non-existent screen, the cursor wandered there. Pick "PC screen only" from the Project menu.
A driver update broke the touchpad driver. Roll back: Device Manager → right-click touchpad → Properties → Driver tab → Roll Back Driver.
BIOS setting toggled the touchpad off. Reboot, press F2 to enter BIOS, find "Touchpad" under the Main or Advanced tab, set to Enabled.
Failed touchpad ribbon cable (rare). The ribbon connecting the touchpad to the motherboard can come loose after a fall. Requires opening the laptop to reseat.

Frequently asked

Why has the cursor disappeared on my Acer laptop? +

Three common causes on Acer specifically: (1) the trackpad has been disabled by the Fn+F7 hotkey (very easy to hit by accident), (2) Windows hid the cursor automatically while typing — toggleable in mouse settings, or (3) the touchpad driver has crashed and needs reloading. Press Fn+F7 first; that fixes about half of all cases.

Is the cursor problem the same as the trackpad not working? +

No. "Cursor disappeared" means the trackpad is still moving the (invisible) pointer — clicks register, things you cannot see are getting clicked. "Trackpad not working" means moving your finger does nothing at all. Same fixes for the first two causes; "trackpad not working" usually points to a driver or hardware issue rather than a hidden cursor.

Will Fn+F7 break anything? +

No. Fn+F7 toggles the touchpad on and off — it is meant for when you plug in an external mouse and want to disable the touchpad. Pressing it again re-enables. The hotkey varies slightly by Acer model (some use F6, some use F8) but the icon on the function key shows a small touchpad with a slash through it.