What is a CUR File?

📋 On This Page

What is CUR? Quick Facts The Hotspot Inside a CUR File CUR vs ICO CUR vs ANI Sizes and Look How to Open Set It as Your Cursor Good to Know FAQ

📖 What is a CUR File?

A CUR file is a Windows cursor. It holds the small picture that Windows draws for your mouse pointer, the arrow you move around the screen and the shapes it changes into as you work.

You have seen its output all day without thinking about it. The plain arrow, the spinning circle while something loads, the beam that appears over editable text, each of those is a cursor image, and a custom one ships as a .cur file.

Under the hood a CUR is built from the very same parts as an icon, with one cursor specific addition that the rest of this guide is really about. That addition is the hotspot.

⚡ Quick Facts

Full Name	Windows Cursor Image
Extension	.cur
Developer	Microsoft
Category	Cursor image, system file
Holds	A still pointer image plus a hotspot
Standard Size	32 x 32 pixels
Colour Depths	Up to 32-bit with an alpha channel
Base Format	DIB bitmap, the same as ICO
Animated Cousin	ANI
Related Formats	ICO, ANI

🎯 The Hotspot

The hotspot is the one thing that makes a cursor a cursor rather than a small picture. It is a single pixel inside the image, and it is the point Windows treats as your click. Move the mouse and Windows tracks that pixel, not the whole arrow.

The red dot is the hotspot

On an arrow pointer it sits at the very tip. Wherever that pixel lands is the spot Windows counts as your click, not the middle of the arrow.

Its position is stored as an offset from the top left corner of the image. An arrow puts the hotspot at its tip, a crosshair puts it dead centre and a pointing hand puts it at the fingertip. By default a new cursor sets the hotspot to the top left pixel at coordinates 0 and 0.

💡 Why it matters: A cursor with its hotspot in the wrong place feels broken, your clicks land beside whatever you are aiming at. When the Univik ICO Converter saves a cursor it reads the hotspot and keeps it, so the click point stays exactly where the designer put it.

🔬 Inside a CUR File

A CUR borrows the icon layout, a small table of contents sitting in front of the picture data, which is why people call it an icon that thinks it is a pointer. Three parts make it up:

Header

A short header that stamps the file as a cursor and counts the images inside.

Directory Entry with the Hotspot

One entry per image. This is where a cursor differs, carrying the hotspot X and Y in the two fields an icon uses for colour planes and bit count.

Image Data

The pointer picture itself, stored as a DIB bitmap with the mask that gives a cursor its shape and its see through areas.

🫧 Transparency: Like a modern icon, a 32-bit cursor carries a full alpha channel, so a pointer can have soft, smooth edges instead of the hard jagged outline that older cursors had.

⚖️ CUR vs ICO

CUR and ICO are close enough to be twins. Both are built on the DIB bitmap layout and both hold a small still image. The split is what each one is for:

Feature	CUR	ICO
Used for	The mouse pointer	Program and file icons
Flagged as	A cursor	An icon
Extra field	Hotspot X and Y	Colour planes and bit count
Base format	DIB bitmap	DIB bitmap
Set in Windows	As a pointer scheme	As an app or shortcut icon

✅ Good to know: Because the containers match, an icon and a cursor convert cleanly between each other. The main thing a tool has to handle is the hotspot, which an ICO has no room to keep. Read more in our ICO file guide.

🎞️ CUR vs ANI

If a cursor moves on your screen, it is not a CUR. Animation lives in a separate format called ANI, and the two split cleanly by whether the pointer plays or stays still:

🖱️

CUR

A single still image. One frame that never moves, with a hotspot. The classic static pointer.

🎞️

ANI

An animated cursor. A run of frames with timing so the pointer loops, like the old spinning wait rings. It carries a hotspot too.

📐 Sizes and Look

A cursor has to stay crisp from a small laptop screen to a large high resolution monitor, so a CUR can carry more than one size and Windows picks the one that fits your display.

🎯

Standard Size

32 x 32 pixels is the everyday cursor, with 16 x 16 kept around for smaller displays.

🖥️

High Resolution

48 x 48, 64 x 64 and larger keep the pointer sharp on high resolution screens that scale everything up.

🫧

Smooth Edges

A 32-bit alpha channel gives 256 levels of transparency, so a pointer blends into whatever sits behind it.

📂 How to Open a CUR File

Double clicking a CUR does not pop it open the way a photo would, since Windows treats it as a pointer, not a picture. To actually see what is inside, use a tool that reads cursors:

✅ View the Cursor (Recommended)

Head to the free Univik ICO Viewer in a browser tab.
Drop the .cur onto the viewer or use Browse to find it.
Read off the pointer, its pixel size and its colour depth.
Save a copy to PNG if you want a flat picture of it.

🧰 Other Ways to See It

Image editors: GIMP and IrfanView open a .cur as a picture.
Cursor editors: IcoFX and RealWorld Cursor Editor open and edit it, hotspot included.
Windows preview: Explorer shows a small thumbnail of the pointer.
To use it: set it as a pointer, covered just below.

🖱️ Set It as Your Cursor

Most people who download a .cur want to actually use it. Applying one takes four steps:

Save the file somewhere safe

Copy the .cur into C:\Windows\Cursors so a saved scheme can always find it later.

Open your mouse settings

Go to Settings, then Bluetooth and devices, then Mouse, then Additional mouse settings. The old Control Panel Mouse applet works too.

Browse to the cursor

On the Pointers tab, pick the pointer role you want to change, click Browse and choose your .cur file.

Save it as a scheme

Use Save As on the Pointers tab so your choice survives a restart instead of resetting to the default.

⚠️ Note: The hotspot travels inside the file, so if a downloaded cursor clicks a little off target, the fix is to correct the hotspot in a cursor editor, not to move the artwork.

⚠️ CUR Good to Know

🚫 The Catches

Static only: for a moving pointer you need ANI.
Windows format: macOS uses its own cursor system.
Hotspot errors: a bad hotspot makes clicks feel off.
Not a photo: it is a small pointer image, nothing more.

✅ What CUR Does Well

Precise clicks: the hotspot pins the exact click point.
Smooth edges: 32-bit alpha for a clean pointer.
Web ready: works as a CSS cursor on a page.
Easy to swap: Windows changes pointers in a few clicks.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

A CUR file is a Windows cursor image. It holds the still picture that Windows draws for the mouse pointer, such as an arrow or a text beam, along with a hotspot that marks the exact click point. Custom themes use CUR files to change how the pointer looks.

To see the picture inside a CUR, open it in a viewer that reads cursors, such as the free Univik ICO Viewer. To actually use it, you set the file as a mouse pointer through Windows mouse settings rather than opening it like a normal image.

The hotspot is the single pixel a cursor treats as its click point, measured as an offset from the top left corner. On an arrow it sits at the tip, on a crosshair at the centre. Wherever the hotspot lands is where Windows registers the click.

Place a copy in C:\Windows\Cursors so it stays put, open Mouse settings and go to the Pointers tab, pick the pointer role you want to change, click Browse and choose the .cur file, then save it as a scheme so it survives a restart.

They use the same underlying image container. A CUR is flagged as a cursor and stores a hotspot, while an ICO is flagged as an icon and stores colour plane details in that spot instead. A CUR becomes a mouse pointer, an ICO becomes a program or file icon.

A CUR is a single still image, one frame that never moves. An ANI is an animated cursor, a sequence of frames with timing so the pointer plays like a tiny loop. Both carry a hotspot, and both change the mouse pointer.

Yes. CSS can point at a cursor file with the cursor property, written as cursor: url(pointer.cur), auto, and the browser uses the CUR when the mouse is over that element. Keep the file small, since a heavy cursor slows the page.

The built in pointers live in C:\Windows\Cursors, and custom cursors go in the same folder so a saved scheme can find them. Windows themes can also bundle their own CUR files and swap the whole set at once.