Question: My mouse pointer became invisible after some updates after I upgraded to 15.04 from 14.10. 
In all standard settings the mouse pointer is activated (system settings, dconf...)
I also tried different cursor icons with no success.

The pointer is sometimes visible after I shut down and reboot the system. But only sometimes and I couldn't figure out a patterns why it sometimes shows up.

I found the following solution which did not work

```
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.cursor active false

```

Any help appreciated! thanks!

Answer: 
This is [a very old Unity bug](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-greeter/+bug/1453538) to which that are references that date back to 13.04. Given that Unity version 7 is reaching its end of life, probably it will never be fixed. For a while, logging out and logging back in would temporarily revive the mouse pointer, but this workaround no longer does it on Ubuntu 14.04. The `gsettings set` command is not functional on 14.04 either.

However, this problem can be fixed on 14.04 by issuing this command:

`setsid unity`

This will reset all your Unity options, number of workspaces, launcher size, etc. But better that than not having the mouse pointer.
I came here from google because I have been experiencing the same problem in ubuntu `16.04` . The last several times it has happened, i was reliably able to get the mouse back by simply opening a terminal using `ctrl` + `alt` + `t` .

better than having to reboot every time.