CatchMouse

Jump the mouse cursor between displays with a global keyboard shortcut.

A modern, Apple-Silicon-native reimplementation of the classic CatchMouse utility (v1.2, ftnew.com, 2011), which shipped only as a 32/64-bit Intel binary and runs on Apple Silicon Macs solely through Rosetta. This is a clean rewrite in Swift — it builds and runs natively on arm64, with no original code or assets reused.

Why

The original CatchMouse.app is a i386 + x86_64 Mach-O with no published source, so it cannot be rebuilt or recompiled for Apple Silicon. This project reproduces its behaviour — move the cursor to a chosen display instantly — as a small, dependency-free menu-bar agent built with the modern toolchain.

Features

• 🖥️ Per-display hotkeys — ⌃⌘, / ⌃⌘. / ⌃⌘/ warp the cursor to the centre of the left / centre / right display.
• 🔁 Cycle — ⌃⌥→ / ⌃⌥← move to the next / previous display, wrapping around.
• ⚙️ Customisable — set your own shortcut for each display (and for cycling) in the Preferences window; bindings are saved per monitor and survive reconnects.
• 🔢 Identify Displays — flash a big number on each screen so you know which is which.
• 🧭 Menu-bar agent — lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon); the menu lists every attached display and its size, and updates live as you plug monitors in and out.
• 🔓 No Accessibility permission required — cursor movement uses CGWarpMouseCursorPosition rather than synthetic events.
• ⌨️ Scriptable — the same actions are available as CLI verbs, so you can bind them to your own launcher or window manager.
• 🏎️ Native — universal arm64 + x86_64 binary; no Rosetta on Apple Silicon.

Install

Build from source

Requires the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). A full Xcode install is not needed.

git clone https://github.com/zhouyi-xiaoxiao/CatchMouse.git
cd CatchMouse
./build_app.sh

This produces build/CatchMouse.app. Move it to /Applications and launch it:

cp -R build/CatchMouse.app /Applications/
open /Applications/CatchMouse.app

A cursor icon appears in the menu bar. The app launches as a background agent, so there is no Dock icon or window.

Usage

Global hotkeys

Shortcut	Action
⌃⌘, / ⌃⌘. / ⌃⌘/	Jump to the left / centre / right display
⌃⌥→	Move to the next display
⌃⌥←	Move to the previous display

Displays are ordered left → right by their position in the global desktop, so ⌃⌘, is the left-most display, ⌃⌘. the centre and ⌃⌘/ the right. (With more than three displays, , . / map to the first three; use ⌃⌥→ / ⌃⌥← to reach the rest.)

Customise shortcuts: open Preferences… from the menu-bar icon, click any recorder and press the combination you want (⎋ cancels, ⌫ clears). Each display's binding is stored per monitor by its UUID, so it sticks even after you unplug and replug. Identify Displays flashes a number on every screen so you can tell them apart.

Command line

Running the binary with an argument performs a single action and exits — handy for scripting or binding to another tool:

CatchMouse --list        # list displays: number, id, size, position
CatchMouse --move 2      # warp the cursor to the centre of display 2
CatchMouse --move-next   # warp to the next display
CatchMouse --move-prev   # warp to the previous display

(The binary inside the bundle is at build/CatchMouse.app/Contents/MacOS/CatchMouse.)

Development

swift build            # debug build
swift run CatchMouse --list
./build_app.sh         # release .app bundle (universal when possible)

File	Role
DisplayManager.swift	Enumerate displays, compute centres, warp the cursor
HotKeyCenter.swift	Carbon RegisterEventHotKey wrapper for global hotkeys
AppDelegate.swift	Wires hotkeys + menu together, reacts to display changes
StatusMenuController.swift	The menu-bar status item and its menu
CLI.swift	Scriptable --list / --move* verbs

Credits

Inspired by the original CatchMouse by ftnew.com. This is an independent, clean-room reimplementation of the idea — no source, binary, or artwork from the original is included.

License

MIT.