FIX: Mozilla Firefox Hides Mouse Pointer/Cursor While Typing

If you upgraded to newer version of Mozilla Firefox web browser (119.0 and later) and it suddenly started hiding the mouse cursor or pointer while typing, this article will help you in fixing the issue and forcing Firefox to always show mouse pointer on computer screen.

In previous versions of Firefox browser, when the user started typing inside a text box, search box, etc on websites, Firefox used to always show the mouse pointer or cursor on screen. But in newer versions such as Firefox 119.0 and later, the web browser automatically hides or removes the mouse pointer from the screen as soon as the user starts typing inside a text box.

It happens because Mozilla team has implemented new code in Firefox to allow the web browser to respect Windows mouse pointer settings. Actually all Windows versions automatically hide the mouse pointer/cursor while the user is typing. The built-in option to hide mouse pointer while typing is enabled by default in mouse properties and native Windows apps such as Notepad, Wordpad, etc respect this behavior.

Mozilla Firefox never followed this setting and always displayed the mouse pointer. Many Firefox users were complaining about this behavior and were requesting Mozilla team to force Firefox to respect mouse settings since many years.

Now Mozilla team has enabled the same behavior in Firefox and the web browser also hides the mouse cursor while typing.

If you don’t like this new behavior and want to restore the old classic behavior to always show mouse pointer/cursor in Firefox, you’ll need to turn off the relevant option using mouse properties in Windows operating system.

Following steps will help you in fixing the pointer disappearing issue and always showing mouse pointer or cursor in Firefox, Windows and all software programs when you are typing inside a text box:

STEP 1: Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box.

STEP 2: Type main.cpl inside RUN dialog box and press Enter. It’ll open Mouse properties window.

STEP 3: Go to “Pointer Options” tab.

PS: You can directly run control main.cpl,,2 command in RUN dialog box to launch Mouse properties window activated with Pointer Options tab.

STEP 4: Disable or uncheck “Hide pointer while typing” checkbox and apply the changes.

That’s it. It’ll immediately turn off the feature system wide and Firefox will start showing mouse pointer/cursor while you are typing on websites.

NOTE: If you are using older versions of Firefox and want to force Firefox to respect “hide pointer while typing” setting, you can set the widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing preference or flag to True using about:config page. The preference has been removed from Firefox 119 and later versions. I noticed a new preference widget.gtk.hide-pointer-while-typing.enabled introduced in Firefox newer versions but it didn’t re-enable the mouse pointer while typing.

Also Check:

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