macos 10.13 - fixing a display "stutter"

I had an issue recently on macOS High Sierra (10.13) where the display would “stutter” in a semi-reproducible way: the top third of the desktop (including the menu bar) would quickly flicker at the bottom of the display (similar to this).

After ruling out hardware issues, I found that this stutter would happen when the cursor is moused over a link, an image, or when used to adjust window sizes: actions that usually change the pointer symbol from an arrow to a hand or cursor.

The solution is re-adjust the “Cursor size” under “Settings” > “Accessibility” > “Display” > “Cursor size:”.

I had earlier changed the cursor size to the largest setting possible, which (much) later likely caused the flickering issues when the cursor changes. Re-adjusting this setting eliminated the issue.