Hide textfield blinking cursor

Question

The basic idea is, that the cursor's color is the same as the text's color. So the first thing you do is make the text transparent, thus taking the cursor away with it. Then you can make the text visible again with a text shadow.

Use this link to see it live in jsfiddle.

input[type="text"]{
    color : transparent;
    text-shadow : 0 0 0 #000;
}
input[type="text"]:focus{
    outline : none;
}

Update:

Known to not work in iOS 8 and IE 11

---

Another idea of my is a bit more hacky and requires javascript.

HTML and CSS part:

You make 2 input fields and position one exactly on top of the another with z-index, etc. Then you make the top input field completely transparent, no focus, no color, and alike. You need to set the visible, lower input to disabled, so that it only shows the content of the above input, but not actually works.

Javascript part:

After all the above you sync the two inputs. On keypress or on change you copy the contents of the higher input to the lower.

Summing all the above: you type in an invisible input, and that will be sent to the backend when the form submitted, but every update of the text in it will be echoed into the lower visible, but disabled input field.

caret-color: transparent !important; works in newer browsers

I was looking for a way to hide the blinking cursor on iOS devices for date inputs that trigger a calendar, because you could see the cursor blinking on top of the calendar picker.

input:focus { text-indent: -9999em; }

So in this case my CSS works nicely, obviously the downside is that if you need to see what you are typing then it is not good

Try this:

$(document).ready(
  function() {
    $("textarea").addClass("-real-textarea");
    $(".textarea-wrapper").append("<textarea class=\"hidden\"></textarea>");
    $(".textarea-wrapper textarea.hidden").keyup(
      function() {
        $(".textarea-wrapper textarea.-real-textarea").val($(this).val());
      }
    );
    $(".textarea-wrapper textarea.-real-textarea").focus(
      function() {
        $(this).parent().find("textarea.hidden").focus();
      }
    );
  }
);

.textarea-wrapper {
  position: relative;
}

.textarea-wrapper textarea {
  background-color: white;
}

.textarea-wrapper,
.textarea-wrapper textarea {
  width: 500px;
  height: 500px;
}

.textarea-wrapper textarea.hidden {
  color: white;
  opacity: 0.00;
  filter: alpha(opacity=00);
  position: absolute;
  top: 0px;
  left: 0px;
}

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div class="textarea-wrapper">
  <textarea></textarea>
</div>

The idea is to create a second, invisible <textarea> over/on-top-of the real one. The user is typing in the invisible one but the text doesn't appear (nor the caret/cursor) as it is invisible! You then use JavaScript to assign its value to the visible one.

But it doesn't seem to work in IE8 :'( the caret is still visible even though the opacity is cranked up to 11.

But it works in Firefox... ?

I think this is a perfect solution: make the input wide enough, align right to screen right, thus make cursor and content locate at the outside of the screen, while it's still clickable