It's a common story: you're working with two or three monitors and you lose the mouse cursor. Then you move the mouse frantically to find the missing cursor.

We've all experienced this, and while it's not the most frustrating thing in the world, it's still mildly annoying. Surprisingly, a solution to this age-old problem has been introduced by Microsoft's optional application PowerToys.

As The Verge demonstrates, PowerToys allows you to find your mouse cursor using a feature named Find My Mouse. The best part? To activate this feature, simply double-tap Ctrl. When you do so, the screen darkens and a small ball of light remains around the cursor. The animation just before the cursor is magnified is pretty cool looking and very effective at drawing the eye to the cursor.

I have only been aware of this feature for a short time, but it has already become part of my routine. Perhaps that speaks to how much I lose track of where my mouse cursor is, but I digress.

Microsoft's support page offers various ways to set up "Find My Mouse". We encourage you to take a look there to make the most of this nifty and useful feature. And while you're at it, check out this video of "Find My Mouse" in action.

The Verge also asks the obvious question: why isn't this a standard feature of Windows 11? It also answers the obvious question: yes, it is!

In fact, Windows 11 and 10 have an easy way to find the mouse pointer by simply pressing a single key on the keyboard. The method is as follows.

Note: The images in this guide use Windows 10, but Windows 11 has a similar menu item.

1. Open the Start menu by clicking on the Windows icon or pressing the Windows key on your keyboard. Next, type "mouse" until "Mouse Settings" appears, then click on it.

2. Click on "Additional mouse options."

3. In the box that pops up, click the "Pointer Options" tab and click the checkbox next to "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key" so that a check appears

And then click on the "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key.

That's it. Press the CTRL key on your keyboard and a circle will appear around the mouse pointer. If you want to undo this change, follow the guide again and uncheck the boxes in the last step.

The PowerToys approach is definitely more fancy, but if you don't want to go through the trouble of installing it, you can substitute Windows 10/11's native settings. Either way, the days of losing track of your mouse cursor are over.