'Cursor disappears in Visual Studio 2015

When using Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition my cursor frequently disappears when I perform the Ctrl+. shortcut to resolve missing dependencies. For example, if I am creating a new Entity Framework entity and want to add the [Required] attribute to one of my properties:

  1. Type [Required]. The attribute gets a red squiggly underline.
  2. Click Ctrl+. to bring up the suggested imports
  3. Select the using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations option using the arrow keys
  4. Press Enter to select it and import the using statement

Sometimes I can continue coding without any issues. But most of the time my cursor disappears and I have to click back on the code editor to get my cursor back.

It happens to me on several different computers using Windows 7, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10. I've tried resetting my VS2015 configurations to default, but it didn't seem to help. The only other thing I can think of that might be worth mentioning is that I'm use the Dark theme.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is there a setting change so that the editor keeps focus, or a keyboard shortcut to get the cursor back? It isn't the end of the world to use the mouse but I never had to do it in 2013 so it is slightly annoying.

c++sharpvisual-studiovisual-studio-2015


Solution 1:[1]

I've had this problem as well, for me it seemed to be a glitch with the touch screen capabilities on my laptop. The cursor would disappear when using the track pad and moving into the work area in VS, and come back when I moved it outside to like solution explorer or similar.

Easily resolved by tapping the screen.

Solution 2:[2]

I had the missing cursor issue in VS 2015 Community Edition and it turns out the culprit was the Gotomeeting client software running on my desktop. I was accessing VS 2015 in an RDP session and as long as Gotomeeting was running on the desktop running the RDP client my VS 2015 cursor in the RDP session would disappear randomly.

Solution 3:[3]

I had the problem that the blinking cursor completely disappeared in Visual Studio 2017 (and probably other places as well). Found this old block post, that helped me:

I found the cause of the problem. I had also noticed that I did not have a text cursor (caret) in programs like Windows Live Mail. Somehow my caret size got changed to zero. The solution in Windows 7 was to go to Control Panel, Ease of Access Center, Make the computer easier to see, and under Make things on the screen easier to see set the thickness of the blinking cursor to 1 (mine was displaying a blank field). After applying the change, the text cursor displayed fine in Visual Studio Editor and Windows Live Mail.

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/c7ba185e-1840-4649-984e-c12d5525baa2/cursor-not-visible-in-visual-studio-editor?forum=vseditor

Solution 4:[4]

None of the (many across web) posted solutions for the disappearing cursor worked. I found a solution that works for me go to:

Tools/Options/Environment/General/Window layout

there are 2 radio buttons:

  • Tabbed Documents
  • Multiple Documents

You must select one or the other. I switched to Multiple Documents and this solved the problem.

Details: this problem manifests when changing the focus to any other open window/application via Alt+Tab. On return, Vis Studio has no cursor visible. Ctrl+Tab is a sorry workaround, yet effective. But this fix is totally sat for me.

Solution 5:[5]

Try pressing the "insert" button. You might need to hold down the "fn" key for this.

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 Alex
Solution 2 Craig A
Solution 3 Kissaki
Solution 4 Kaveh
Solution 5 YongaJ

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