Change how fast your text cursor blinks

By default, your cursor blinks about once a second, and it temporarily stops blinking while you're typing. This feature can be useful to clearly see where you are in your text at any point; personally, I find it distracting. I'll show you how to change how often the caret blinks, including how to make it stop blinking.

Change your caret blink rate

Click on the start button (Windows logo) and type "blink". Then, click on the "Change cursor blink rate" result. The "Keyboard Properties" popup will open.

Windows 10 gives you eleven different blink settings, from "None" all the way to "Fast". The screenshot below shows you the default setting. Drag the slider to the right to make the cursor blink faster. Or drag the slider to the left to make the cursor blink more slowly. Either way, pause: the caret preview will start blinking at the updated blink rate. Once you're happy, click OK to save your setting:

Select some text to see where you are

When the caret doesn't blink, it's sometimes hard to tell where you are in your text. Just hit the left or right arrow key on your keyboard and the text editor will scroll to the area of the text when the insertion point is. Remember this trick if you've scrolled out of view and you want to quickly get back to where you were.

You can also quickly select some text, which will highlight it and show you where you are. Hitting Shift+Home will select text from the caret position up to the start or end of the line. (You can just hit the right arrow key to cancel the selection.)

Change how thick your insertion point is

By default, the vertical insertion point is only one pixel wide. That's thin! I like mine two pixels wide: try that width, it really looks much nicer. To do so, open the start menu, and type "caret". Click on "Change text cursor color and size". (Note: clicking on the "Change cursor thickness" start-menu result will bring you to the exact same screen.)

At the very bottom of that screen, move the slider labeled "Change text cursor thickness", and Windows will update the preview in real time. In the screenshot, I've set it to 9, which (unconvincingly) mimics a block caret. Once you're happy with your new caret width, just close the Settings window.

Show or hide your cursor while typing

There's a related setting you should know about. When you type, Windows 10 temporarily hides your cursor (mouse pointer). This prevents it from being in the way of your text. This also means that you have to move your mouse to make the cursor reappear. If you don't like that behavior, you can turn it off as follows:

Click on the start button (Windows logo), and type "pointer". Now click on the "Change the mouse pointer display or speed" result. This will open the classic "Mouse Properties" dialog (popup).

Now uncheck the "Hide pointer while typing" checkbox, and click OK to apply. From now on, your cursor will remain visible even when you type.

Note that your caret (text cursor / insertion point) it not affected by this setting either way.