Changing NSCursor for NSView above an NSTextView

All you need is to subclass a custom view, override awakeFromNib method, add the custom tracking area for [.mouseMoved, .activeAlways] events: NSTrackingArea Info there. There is no need to override resetCursorRects and/or updateTrackingAreas. All you need is to override mouseMoved method and set the desired cursor there:

Note about discardCursorRects method:

From the docs

You need never invoke this method directly

Xcode 9 • Swift 4

import Cocoa class CursorChangingView: NSView { override func awakeFromNib() { addTrackingArea(NSTrackingArea(rect: bounds, options: [.activeAlways, .mouseMoved], owner: self, userInfo: nil)) wantsLayer = true layer?.backgroundColor = NSColor.cyan.cgColor layer?.borderColor = NSColor.black.cgColor layer?.borderWidth = 1 } @objc override func mouseMoved(with theEvent: NSEvent) { NSCursor.pointingHand.set() } } 

Sample

Thanks @Leo Dabus for your answer, but I managed to solve it, so I will post my answer too.

In my case, for some reason, mouseEntered and mouseEntered did not work at all.

So here is my code that finally got it to work:

class CursorChangingView: NSView { let trackingArea: NSTrackingArea? func setupTracking() { if self.trackingArea == nil { self.trackingArea = NSTrackingArea(rect: self.bounds, options: NSTrackingAreaOptions.ActiveAlways | NSTrackingAreaOptions.MouseMoved | NSTrackingAreaOptions.CursorUpdate | NSTrackingAreaOptions.MouseEnteredAndExited | NSTrackingAreaOptions.ActiveInActiveApp, owner: self, userInfo: nil) self.addTrackingArea(self.trackingArea!) } } override func updateTrackingAreas() { self.trackingArea = NSTrackingArea(rect: self.bounds, options: NSTrackingAreaOptions.ActiveAlways | NSTrackingAreaOptions.CursorUpdate | NSTrackingAreaOptions.MouseEnteredAndExited | NSTrackingAreaOptions.ActiveInActiveApp, owner: self, userInfo: nil) self.addTrackingArea(self.trackingArea!) } override func resetCursorRects() { self.discardCursorRects() self.addCursorRect(self.bounds, cursor: NSCursor.arrowCursor()) } override func mouseMoved(theEvent: NSEvent) { NSCursor.arrowCursor().set() } } 

It might be a little excessive, but worked, so will share this as my own solution.

A few important notes:

• Be careful calling super on your mouseMoved or similar events, or the cursor might just get reset by the base class implementation.
• Only reset your tracking area when the parent view size changes; if you try to do this by overriding layout() it's going to be happening all the time which is not great

Here's an example class that you can just use as a base class in your storyboards.

Swift 4 code:

import Cocoa final class MouseTrackingTextView: NSTextView { // MARK: - Lifecycle override func awakeFromNib() { setupTrackingArea() } // MARK: - Resizing // Call this in your controller's `viewDidLayout` // so it only gets called when the view resizes func superviewResized() { resetTrackingArea() } // MARK: - Mouse Events override func resetCursorRects() { addCursorRect(bounds, cursor: cursorType) } override func mouseMoved(with event: NSEvent) { cursorType.set() } // MARK: - Private Properties private var currentTrackingArea: NSTrackingArea? private var cursorType: NSCursor { return isEditable ? .iBeam : .pointingHand } // MARK: - Private API private func setupTrackingArea() { let trackingArea = NSTrackingArea(rect: bounds, options: [.activeAlways, .mouseMoved], owner: self, userInfo: nil) currentTrackingArea = trackingArea addTrackingArea(trackingArea) } private func resetTrackingArea() { if let trackingArea = currentTrackingArea { removeTrackingArea(trackingArea) } setupTrackingArea() } }