Is there a way to make the Mac’s text cursor – the blinking vertical bar – wider, or otherwise easier to see?
In the past I seem to remember that some apps had individual settings for this, but now it seems the cursor’s appearance is fixed across the system. I can just about live with how it looks in most text editing apps, but in LibreOffice I find the cursor really hard to locate.
As far as I can see, neither LibreOffice nor System Settings lets you control the appearance of the text cursor. And I can’t find anything on the web, although there’s plenty of advice about changing the pointer size.
macOS bristles with accessibility features, so have I missed something? Perhaps at one time there was a Terminal hack?
Sadly, you seem to be correct. I wanted to help you out, so I just had a good look around in various settings in the System Preferences app. Like you, I found how to change the size of the pointer, but NOT the actual text cursor. I also looked around on the web for a bit and was unable to find anything either.
Myself, I am 70 with poor vision, even with corrective lenses. So, in the case of writing text documents, the only solution I have found is to increase the text size in BBEdit. And if you want to know, I keep the font size at 24 point.
Bill, thanks so much for looking at this. It still seems odd to me that Apple doesn’t offer an option for this, given that many apps seem to rely on the system framework. I suppose a partial solution might be to seek out apps that do have their own ways to render the cursor. I’m sure I’ve seen that in the past, but I can’t lay my hands on any at the moment. Ironically, the cursor in this web form is quite easy to see.
Charles, I agree. Being able to change the size of the text cursor in any text field in any app should be universally available via the “Accessibility” section of the System Preferences" app. It seems like an oversight on Apple’s part, given how conscious they have always been regarding people with disabilities and such.
