Why does this box with a cross appear in the middle of my screen in X-Plane 12?

That box with a cross sitting in the middle of your screen is X-Plane 12's mouse yoke. It shows up when X-Plane can't detect a calibrated yoke or joystick, so it falls back to using your mouse for pitch and roll. The cross is the neutral position, the box is the active control area, and your mouse position inside the box is what's actually flying the plane. Now here's where it gets annoying. It can also pop up when your hardware was connected fine but X-Plane lost it during the session, or when it sees the device but the controls aren't properly assigned in the joystick settings. And since the 12.06 update, Laminar Research stripped out the simple toggle that used to turn it off - so even people with perfectly working yokes are stuck with this thing on screen and no obvious way to get rid of it.

Where can I download the FlyWithLua script to remove the mouse yoke box with a cross on it on X-Plane 12?

You'll find the script download at the top of this page. keep in mind you still need to go through all the instructions step by step

X-Plane 12 screenshot showing view from inside a Cessna 172 with an arrow pointing to the mouse yoke box with cross inside it — Get Rid of that Box With a Cross on Screen in X-Plane 12

Remove the Box with the Cross in it on X-Plane 12

Category: X-Plane·Published: May 7, 2026·Last Updated: May 7, 2026

Steve | G-LOC MEDIA

Flight simulation enthusiast and YouTuber

If you're seeing a transparent box with a cross (the mouse yoke) in the centre of your screen in X-Plane 12, it means X-Plane isn't detecting your yoke or joystick and has fallen back to mouse control for pitch and roll. This is common when using force feedback yokes that run on their own software such as Brunner force feedback yokes and Moza force feedback yokes. The quickest fix is usually to disconnect and reconnect your control device. If that doesn't work, you can force the mouse yoke to stay disabled using a FlyWithLua script. Here's the step-by-step guide to remove the box and cross from your X-Plane 12 display for good.

Download Files (.zip)

Step 1

Get Yourself a FREE x-plane.org account at X-Plane.org (This is not the x-plane.org store)

Step 2

Download “Fly With Lua” plugin and make sure it's the FlyWithLua NG+ version. This is a very powerful X-Plane 12 plug in but we will just use it for a single line entry of code to disable the mouse yoke box with cross.

Step 3

Unzip fly with Lua by right clicking and then using the unzip function (No need to install 7Zip)

Step 4

Copy the unzipped folder to your x-plane plug-in folder eg: C: Drive X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins

Step 5

Open the Fly With Lua plugin folder eg: C: Drive X-Plane 12/Resources/plugins/FlyWithLua

Step 6

In here you will see a folder called “scripts”. Open scripts and paste the downloaded scripts file into this folder

Step 7

Open X-Plane and load up the simulator

Step 8

You should see that the mouse yoke box with a cross in it has gone

#x-plane

Frequently Asked Questions

FlyWithLua is a free, open-source plugin for X-Plane 12 that lets you run small Lua scripts inside the simulator to add custom features, tweak settings, or fix things X-Plane doesn't let you change natively. It's been around since X-Plane 9 and is one of the most widely used X-Plane plugins, with hundreds of community scripts available - including the one we'll use to remove the mouse yoke box and cross. The current version for X-Plane 12 is officially called FlyWithLua NG+ (Next Generation Plus) Edition, so when you write the plugin name in the guide steps, use that exact name to match what people will see when they download it.