Inspiring

Brush flickering to arrow when drawing on a layer with a mask in Photoshop 27.9.1

Forum|Forum|5 days ago
August 27, 2026
4 replies
32 views

Hi,

I’m not sure when and how this bug appeared but I noticed today that the brush is flickering to an arrow cursor (similar to this bug

) when I’m drawing on a layer with a mask on. I don’t know why but it’s extremely annoying, please fix this.
I’m on Windows 11 and the latest version of Photoshop.
Here is a video/screen capture showing the problem, notice how the bug disappear when the mask is disabled and reappears when it is activated :

A

AxelMatt

Community Expert

Unfortunately you haven't given us any information about your system. Therefore, all proposed solutions are a look into the crystal ball

Please provide a copy of your 'System Info'. This can be get from the Photoshop menu item Help > System Info. There's a copy button in the System Info dialog. Press this button and paste the info into a text file and attach it to your next forum post.

In the meantime try to reset the Photoshop preferences

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preferences.html#Manually

Remember to back up your settings before doing the preference reset

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html

Try also to disable the option to "Use Graphics Procesor" from Photoshop by going to Preferences, then Performance. Once done, quit & relaunch Photoshop to check if that helps.

If it helps, you can check out the steps suggested here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/troubleshoot-gpu-graphics-card.html

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 9 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

sbn85

Inspiring

that doesnt metter if person gave information about system or not because still the only response you will give him is to reset preferences. Crystal ball is only needed to possibly find single person who solved photoshop problems with resetting preferences. Well maybe just in case if you notice that someone use GeForce game ready driver then you would say never install game ready driver.

Btw. @jeromea13244388 you can also try to clean mouse ball, experts here says it maybe be a problem too.

jeromea13244388Author

Inspiring

@sbn85 Funnily (?) enough, i reset my preferences out of desperation and it did the trick… And I did the test : when I copy/paste my old settings, the bug reappears so I don’t know what’s in those settings but it’s causing the bug somehow… Crossing fingers that it doesn’t come back.

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