How do you permanently turn off/disable the pointer feature of the magic remote? Is it possible to do? null

Question

supersail · Accepted Answer

Press and hold home and back buttons for about 30 seconds. I couldn't find this anywhere, but stumbled on it in desperation before returning the TV because of that stupid cursor. I can't be the only one who hates this thing!

Answered by supersail 6 years ago

VrPerez · Answer

I DID IT! I know this is way too late, but if anyone is still looking for how to permanently disable the horrible cursor, this is how I did it, and it is PERMANENTLY gone! I can scroll and press the scroll wheel all I want and it won't come back. To make it come back I have to re-register the remote by holding back + home at the same time. I did this repeatedly just to be sure it works, and I'm glad to say it does work!

Here's what you have to do:
First, you have to edit the quick menu options (the options you have when you press the settings button);
Then, include the option "screen off" by clicking on the + button (you'll have to remove one option if there are no slots available).
Press "home" to get rid of this quick menu.
Unregister the remote by holding back + home.
After you get the pop-up message, press the settings button to open the quick menu.
From there, go to "screen off" and press the scroll wheel. You will barely see a pop-up message that the remote is being registered again, but the screen will go off. Finally, just press the scroll wheel again so the screen will turn on, and that's it. You can scroll the wheel or press the scroll wheel all you want and it won't come back.

Again, I did this over and over, and it works every time. I did it with the latest software update as of Jan 2022 on my CX, after 2 years of pain.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

Hans · Answer

Unfortunately this is impossible. The answers others posted with pressing the Back- and Home-Button simultaneously does work, but as soon as I press the Scroll-Button it appears again. So these answers may have worked in the past, but currently they don‘t.

Answered by Hans 5 years ago

Vicki · Answer

IF you go back and read the first two answers on this page, they are the correct ones. 
I pressed and held the home & back/return buttons at the same time for about 30 seconds. Then in the upper right hand corner of the screen I saw a tiny popup that said something like “Registration for the remote has been disconnected.” The cursor on my screen disappeared. I even turned my TV off and back on again to make sure it would stay gone, and it did. It was gone, gone gone.

Then I tried the second answer posted on this page to see if it worked just in case I ever want that annoying cursor back. I pressed & held the scroll button down and saw another popup in the upper right hand corner of the screen that said “Registration for the remote has been connected.” The cursor showed up again. Don’t know why the folks at the LG help centers won’t tell us this, but these solutions really do work. Thanks to the first two posters for all your help.

Coco · Answer

This has got to be one of the most annoying features for the remote. I don't want a computer mouse and tv remote in one, I just want a regular tv remote. Holding the back button and home button for 12 or more seconds does work, but I wasn't able to use the voice control with the remote registration turned off. So if you want to use that feature, you have to have the cursor enabled. That's really stupid, LG should have made an option to completely turn off the cursor and then turn it back on when you want. I do really like my LG smart t.v. but some of the features are more annoying than they are helpful.

Answered by Coco 5 years ago

Ward · Answer

I have gotten the pointer to disappear by holding down the Home and Back buttons simultaneously. BUT it does not stay gone. It comes back if I hit the Home button or the Settings button. I was hoping that Vickie from above could chime in and tell us how her pointer disappeared forever! This is such an annoying feature!

Answered by Ward 6 years ago

Jackration · Answer

Press "Back" button + "Home" button until the mouse disappears. And press "Scroll" button until LED power button is blinking. then the cursor will appear.

Jake · Answer

Get literally any “universal” remote and program it to control the TV. Maybe the one that came with your cable box or whatever. If you don’t have something, go get one of Logitech’s Harmony remotes or similar. Pull the annoying LG remote’s batteries and stash it in a drawer. Never think about it again. 

The trick about holding down Home and Back/Return doesn’t disable the cursor. It deregisters the entire remote. But as soon as you press any of several other buttons, it re-registers itself. It’s sufficient if you just want the cursor to disappear for now, but not if you want to disable that feature entirely. As far as I can tell, LG left us with no way to do that other than what I suggested above.

Swordio · Answer

The solutions presented at the top of this thread do work for some LG TVs, but it appears not for all.

These procedures did NOT work for me, but while trying them I did stumble across an alternative solution on my TV which definitely DOES work. The cursor is gone, and does not come back unless I want it to.

The steps I followed are below (in explicit detail to hopefully avoid confusion).

Take Note - the solutions posted previously appear to use a software version which lets you edit the settings quick menu. My tv does not allow me to edit the quick menu - where others have the “edit” option at the bottom, my tv says “all settings” at the bottom. So I cannot add the option for “screen off”. As such, i could start to follow these procedures, but the smart curser would return every time I pressed the scroll wheel. If you are in the same boat, hopefully this approach will work for you, too.

Step 1) with the tv turned off, turn it on using the smart remote power button.

2) Press the home button on the remote.

3) press the Settings / cog button on the remote to open the settings quick menu.

4) scroll down the quick menu to see if you have the “screen off” option. If not, keep scrolling to the very bottom. If the icon at the bottom of your quick menu is “edit”, try adding the “screen off” option. You may need to delete a different item to create space before you can add it. If you can successfully add “screen off” to your quick menu, first try following the original 2 solutions posted in this thread.

Alternatively, if the bottom item in your settings quick menu is NOT edit and you cannot add the “screen off” option, proceed to the next step.

5) press the Settings / cog button again so the quick menu disappears from the screen.

6) press and hold the Home and Back buttons together for about 5 seconds. The power button on the smart remote will flash 2 or 3 times and you should see a message pop up in the top right corner that says “remote registration disconnected, press the OK wheel to re-register”

7) press the OK wheel, but IMMEDIATELY turn the tv off using the power button on the smart remote. A pop up will appear in the top right corner which says “registering new remote” - you need to power off the tv before it can complete the registration.

8) leave the TV off for about 10 seconds. Then, once again, turn the tv on using the power button on the smart remote. Then try pressing the OK wheel. You should be able to use the clickable wheel to select things, but the pointer should not return. 
If you see the “registering new remote” message in the top right corner (either when turning the tv on, or after pressing the OK wheel) immediately turn the tv off again.

9) if you follow these steps but the remote does successfully re-register, the pointer will come back. So try repeating steps 6 & 7.

If this works successfully, but you eventually want to bring the pointer back, once again press and hold the Home and Back buttons together for about 5 seconds. The power light will flash but there will not be a message on the screen this time. Now, when you press the OK wheel you’ll see the “ registering new remote” message in the top right and the pointer will return.

I’ve tried this several times and this procedure definitely works on my TV. However, like the solutions before, it might not work on ALL LG TVs. 
I hope it works for you.

Answer

I didn't buy mine off of bestbuy, but I saw this when looking it up online. So if anyone's still wondering what to do, I downloaded a free LG tv universal remote app and am using that instead of the stupid remote.

Answered by Anonymous 5 years ago

Anonymous · Answer

If you do what VrPerez says it works when you get to the screen off part as soon as i would press the +on the scroll bar it would repair and not work BUT if you do all the steps the VrPerez says except right after you press the screen off I had to hit the power button immediately after, and when I turned the tv back on it had FINALLY worked! Cursor is finally gone for good after many failed attempts. Hope this helps those who were having the same problem I was.

Answer

It does turn it off but says if you press the okay button it just turns it back on… no matter how long you wait… so this was useless to me

goggleye · Answer

LG UR91 TVs, and probably other LG smart TVs, still have IR sensors. Therefore you can use a replacement or universal IR remote control instead of the original RF magic remote, when the pointer does not appear at all. However you don't get 'pairing' and voice control, or a scrolling function on the 'ok' button.

MoB1 · Answer

@VrPerez 1, thank you so much. Easy procedure and it works.

Answer

VR Perez solution does work!

LorLor63 · Answer

Haaaate that pointer!!! I was prepared to hate the scroll wheel but the pointer is terrible..any little movement on the remote and it activates whatever the pointer lands on...so frustrating, already returned another tv 2 days ago..dont want to do it again..hating this LG..plus the best buy salesman specifically asked me if we had spectrum tv, i said no, he said, good..bcuz it doesnt work with it..i str8 out told him we have d stream..well here we are not able to watch it on this tv..haaaate it...the OS system is also very slow compared to samsung..

Pete82 · Answer

Well... pressing back and home together does work... but then the whole remote goes to sleep in my case.
The only reason I want to be rid of this useless facility is that my (very active) siamese cat goes ape$h1t and launches himself at the TV as soon as he hears the bleep and sees the red pointer, yowling and scratching the OLED screen. He does it within seconds, giving me no chance to press the up/down to get rid of it.
Surely it's not beyond technology for LG to build in a facility to permanently turn off the pointer without 'deregistering' the remote? Grr!

Answer

If you follow the directions from VrPerez or Swordio, it does permanently remove the pointer without disabling any other functionality. Thank you! I had to go through the steps a few times and get the timing right, but I got it to work. Very happy now that it’s gone. LG should have definitely given an option to turn off in the settings

Ruprick · Answer

None of the solutions presented here actually work.

I'll be buying a different brand of TV next time solely because of this annoying pointer.

You dropped the ball on this one LG. And why your flagship soundbar cannot maintain a decent eARC connection to your flagship OLED TV is beyond me, but there's no future for LG in my household.

Answer

How

Helpyourself · Answer

You can’t make it disappear, but you can enlarge the teardrop in settings and you cam also slow the thing down! Which helped out my old self!

disappointed · Answer

The remote sucks!  Thanks a lot LG!

Disappointed · Answer

It is impossible.  I tried the instructions given on this page and they don’t work.  The remote TOTALLY SUCKS!  I am getting sick to my stomach following that pointer around the screen.  I’d like to just throw up on the remote, maybe that will short it out.  The remote is making watching TV painful.  I’d rather just read a book.  Thanks alot LG.  Ya suck and so does the engineer who designed the remote.  Here’s an idea … let’s make a remote that everyone hates.  Well done LG … well done.

Answer

I did buy this from Best buy but this will be my last LG TV that I ever buy.   this is the worst feature ever and I can't believe you can't disable.  I spent hours trying to figure out how to disable that stupid cursor and you can't disable it.  It's pretty sad because webos is a piece of garbage but the TV hardware itself is really nice.

Answer

It doesn’t work

justeady · Answer

Are there other options available WITHOUT the wheel?
That would be such a blessing!!!

Chester · Answer

Brand new set this week, 9-2023 and this issue still is here, can not disable. LG suggests another cheaper remote

Answer

My cat tries to attack these curser. I need to disable it be4 she ends up being Chinese food

Answer

This works. Press and hold home and back for approximately 15 seconds. DON’T REREGISTER THE REMOTE OR THE POINTER WILL COME BACK. So there is no pointer if the remote is not registered. If you want it back do step one and click reregister. Thanks guys, this make my tv experience better.

Answer

It doesn’t work for everybody. I just got my TV in early 2023. When I hold the home and back button, it does work but only for a few seconds and it automatically re-registers the remote. I cannot permanently stop the stupid cursor.

Answer

Switch to previous version of LG remote.
"AKB75095307"
Available at amazon and a few other electronic shops.

Joss · Answer

I found that on my lg nano cell it would turn the cursor off if I pressed home and back at the same time but reconnects when I press settings and the microphone so…

Burntout · Answer

Buy a new universal remote that will work with your TV. Make sure it does NOT say Magic Remote. This is the only way to get rid of that stupid cursor forever. I bought one for $13.00 and it works great.

Answer

comment by VRPerez worked for me! thank you!

Rach · Answer

Yes. The holding the home and back button until you hit the “ok”

Go to 
Settings
General 
Home settings (click on)
Turn off/on home animation

Jackaria · Answer

Okay! So I've just figured this out

Home and back button for 30 seconds - that will cause it to (deregister) when clicking home or settings it stays gone.

However pressing the OK/Scroll Wheel button causes it to re-register. 

Note: You cannot use the settings this way however 

The benefit I've noticed is that when I pick up the remote it doesn't automatically start whizzing around and start circling my screen because I want to pause. If you load up settings and press any of the arrow keys however it again disappears

ThankgodthecursorisGONE · Answer

The answer from VrPerez works PUUUURFECTLY!!!  Do not listen to nay sayers.   Follow the instructions verbatim, and the wretched cursor is GONE!!!!

Answer

The response below worked for me today (7/6/2023).  I added the screen off option in settings.  Then pressed the “home” and “back” button on the remote at the same time.  A few secs later a notification popped asking to disconnect remote.  I pressed to select. And boom stupid pointy thing that gets in the way and selects things randomly was gone.  Thank you to the previous posters.

Answer

I only had to hold the home and back buttons down at the same time for about 5 seconds. Thank you so much for this. I HATED that infernal cursor.

GregT · Answer

Press the home and back buttons at the same time. On my OLED55C1AUB It happened instantly.

midnight28rider · Answer

I FINALLY DID IT!!  The previously mentioned method of holding Home and Back for 30 seconds no longer works. After 20 minutes with geek squad and 2 calls totaling over 40 minutes with LG I have the fix!
Settings> All Settings> General> Accessibility> Audio Guidance> Enable the Function. After this scroll down to Volume and set to Very Low. 
This is the only work around that I think exists, LG support actually told me there was no way to turn it off.

hustlingartist · Answer

For me I tried everything everyone said about backwards button and home button .press down at the same time. I turn off the TV. Thinking that may help. Then eventually I started the whole internet connection over. The (cursor) pointer turned off. (SO TRY STARTING THE INTERNET OVER FROM MENU AND LOGGING BACK IN . Plus still try the back button plus home button.1. After pressing the exit + home button.2. I went to the menu button 3.started the internet service over. When the TV came back the cursor were gone. (65 INCH SAMSUNG CURVE TV)
Hope this helps you guys

Answer

"UNREGISTERING THE MAGIC REMOTE" is what you are actually doing when you want that horrible cursor to disappear. My instructions for the remote were accurate and match the 1st answer on this site. I just held the "BACK"
and "HOME" buttons at the same time for 5 seconds and a pop up box said it was done.

Nee05 · Answer

On the TV remote. Hold the power button down and hold it down until the TV goes off and then comes back on. It’s a reboot to your TV. Worked for me. I hope it works for you!

Mickeysbrother · Answer

I got rid of the curser by holding down the return and the home buttons until the red dot went away. Then rolled the scroll wheel down four or five clicks. I did not push on it just rolled it. Gone baby gone. Life is good again!

MaccaWings68 · Answer

Thanks for the information to those who posted about holding down the Home and Back buttons for 30 seconds. Success!! Received the same message “Registration for the remote has been disconnected.” The cursor has not appeared again. Thankful for the internet where I can get better answers from people I have never met than the company that made the product. Happy 2020 folks. :)

Tweedlenuts · Answer

Hey everyone! I work at a Best Buy as a home theater consultant, all though I will disclaim that my answer should not be interpreted in anyway as LG's response. 

I find the features of the Magic Remote extremely fascinating, however, the cursor seems to be my customers' top complaint; especially not being able to completely disable it. Now, you can un-pair the Magic Remote from the tv using the steps that have been posted on this thread a few times. Doing this, will turn the magic remote into a basic infrared remote. A nice selling point of the magic remote is that it is bluetooth connected to the tv, meaning it does not need a light of sight to still function. This also allows the voice control button to work, and many other built in features. I do agree however, that the cursor should have an option to be disabled entirely, rather than just being able to adjust its speed and cursor size. I feel as if LG is getting enough feed back on this, that they will eventually release a software update adding this option.

Richard · Answer

Press hold home button + back button
Curser will be gone
Hope this helps you guys
Cheers

LGTVpointerpains · Answer

After much searching and emailing to and for with LG, you cannot disable given existing software/programming. A really annoying and distracting feature, especially if you don't have a steady hand. Other 2 options:
- use an alternative remote
- open the remote and disconnect the pointer connections, if you know where to look. I don't, but LG do.

Michael · Answer

Ignore the flying cursor just long enough to press up or down or left or right on the circle surrounding the scroll wheel. The manic dot will disappear and the remote will respond instead to the up/down/left/right commands. Click the scroll wheel as if it were a button to confirm selection. No need to deregister or take other steps to unpair the bluetooth function. This applies to the remote shipped with LG OLED sets in 2020, 2021 — probably with others as well.

Todd · Answer

So, I think I've figured out how to take care of this. The pointer popped up today while I was fooling around with some of the apps on the TV. Did everything I could to get rid of the arrow, including the home/back combo, but couldn't get that to work. Finally, opened up the Internet app on the television. Once the browsing screen opened, moved the arrow down.... and then off the screen completely. Gone.

undsaleen · Answer

No Idea. As far as I can tell, no you can't permanently disable the pointer but here is info from LG:

Press the up, down, left or right button to scroll the menu. If you press buttons while the pointer is in use, the pointer will disappear from the screen and Magic Remote will operate like a general remote control. To display the pointer on the screen again, shake Magic Remote to the left and right.

Cooper · Answer

I use the remote with my direct tv.

JosephAGarcia · Answer

You cannot turn it off. At least according to places I've viewed online. However once you set the remote down, it goes away. It hasn't been much of an issue.

“How do you permanently turn off/disable the pointer feature of the magic remote? Is it possible to do?”

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