Cursor as full screen crosshairs
I have a 27" iMac running Snow Leopard. In a wide range of applications I often need to use a straight edge to compare different values on charts, even sometimes charts generated by different applications. To do this I have made do with clumsy solutions like creating a floating and transparent Sticky or using Shift + Command + 4. I've also tried a small app called Crosshairs.
None of these things do what I really want. Ideally, I'd like a full screen crosshair centered on the cursor. Another way to think about this, it would give me a full height vertical and full width horizontal line that would show up over (on top of) any and all applications, just as a cursor does. Nice to haves it would give the coordinates of the display and have toolbar or right click access to turn it on or off.
Any suggestions?
Solution 1:
While it has many more features than this, something like xScope sounds great for this.
Some main features:
- mirroring
- getting on screen dimensions
- rulers
- guides
- frames
- crosshair
Solution 2:
Update: QuickLens has an excellent set of tools: a full screen live crosshair, movable/lockable guides, ruler and a few other measurement, magnification and alignment tools. It was recently (Sep 2020) rewritten as a 2.x release, ready for Catalina and Big Sur. This is my current favorite.
PixelSnap 2 is a well designed app that provides great crosshair & measurement tools. It's a bit costly for just a crosshair, but you can get it now as part of Setapp if you happen to subscribe to that.
Red Lines Tools (App Store, currently free as of 8/2020). It has crosshairs, a magnifier, grid/image overlays, adjustable keybindings, and many other customizations. There are a few bugs but it gets the job done.
Another possible solution: Monosnap is a free screen capture app that displays full-screen crosshairs when capturing an area. You can trigger it via a hotkey and then hit ESC to cancel without actually taking a screenshot if all you want to do is use the crosshairs for alignment.
As others have mentioned, xScope is another option, although it's costly if all you need is crosshairs.
There used to be a small and efficient app called Euclid written by Nicholas Jensen that was specifically for crosshairs. Unfortunately, it's been abandoned.
Solution 3:
Free solution: Mouse Locator http://www.2point5fish.com/
You can make whatever custom cursors you want.
Hotkeys can turn it on/off, and if you want coordinates, you could launch Pixie (or another app) and keep it in the corner.