Novus Convert
Convert files
Image format

CUR converter

A .cur file is a Windows cursor: a container holding one or more pointer images at different sizes, plus a hotspot — the exact pixel within the image that counts as the click point. It shares its structure with the Windows icon format and differs from it in only two fields.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop CUR files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where CUR comes from

The cursor format dates to Windows 1.0 in 1985 and has been extended rather than replaced ever since: colour arrived with the platform's colour depth, 32-bit alpha with Windows XP, and PNG-compressed frames with Windows Vista. Its sibling .ani adds animation frames. The design has outlived nearly everything else of its era largely because the hotspot concept has no equivalent anywhere else.

How CUR works

  • The directory header is identical to ICO except that the type field at offset 2 is 2 rather than 1 — that single value is what makes a file a cursor instead of an icon.
  • The two 16-bit fields holding colour planes and bit depth in an icon carry the hotspot X and Y coordinates in a cursor.
  • Each directory entry points at an image stored either as a legacy DIB with an AND mask or, since Vista, as an embedded PNG.
  • Width and height are single bytes, so 256 is encoded as 0 — a real edge case for naive readers.
  • Several sizes live in one file so the OS can pick the right one for the display scale.

When to use CUR

  • Extracting a cursor image for documentation, screenshot annotation or design reference
  • Converting a custom cursor into a web-usable PNG for a CSS cursor property
  • Inspecting which sizes and colour depths a cursor file actually contains
  • Migrating legacy desktop-theme assets into a modern format

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • The hotspot travels with the image, so click accuracy survives distribution
  • Multiple resolutions in one file handle high-DPI displays cleanly
  • Modern files can use PNG frames, avoiding the legacy DIB and mask entirely

Limitations

  • Windows-specific; macOS and Linux use entirely different cursor mechanisms
  • The shared structure with ICO means files are routinely mislabelled as icons
  • The 0-means-256 dimension encoding trips up readers regularly
  • Legacy DIB frames with AND masks are awkward to decode correctly

Compatibility

Native to Windows, which uses it for every pointer, and supported by icon editors and ImageMagick. Browsers accept CUR in the CSS cursor property but will not render one as an image. Novus Convert reads the PNG-compressed frame locally — validating that the directory really declares type 2 rather than an icon — and converts it to the standard raster formats. The hotspot is a cursor-specific concept that no raster target can carry.

The hotspot coordinates and the per-entry size table belong to the container rather than to the image, and no raster target has anywhere to record them. The embedded PNG frame's own metadata is carried through the conversion.

Convert CUR to another format