# CSS: “cursor”: “arrow” is not a “cursor” value.

> Canonical HTML version: https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/css-cursor-arrow-is-not-a-cursor-value
> Attribution: Rocket Validator (https://rocketvalidator.com)
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

The CSS `cursor` property does not accept `arrow` as a value. To show the standard arrow pointer, use `cursor: default`, which is the platform's default cursor on most systems.

The `cursor` property sets the mouse pointer shown when the pointer is over an element. Its keywords are spelled out in the CSS specification, and `arrow` is not among them. The name people reach for is intuitive, since the everyday pointer is an arrow, but the keyword that produces it is `default`. When the validator meets `cursor: arrow`, it rejects the whole declaration, so the browser ignores it and falls back to whatever cursor it would have used anyway.

This usually goes unnoticed because the default cursor already is an arrow, so nothing looks broken. The cost shows up when you set `cursor: arrow` to override an inherited value, for example to reset the pointer back to normal inside an element that set `cursor: pointer`. The invalid declaration is dropped and the inherited cursor stays in place.

## Invalid example

The value `arrow` is not recognized and triggers a validation error:

```html
<div style="cursor: arrow;">
  Hover over me
</div>
```

## Valid example

Use `default` to get the standard arrow pointer:

```html
<div style="cursor: default;">
  Hover over me
</div>
```