Windows Emacs 25.3 Cursor Type

Question

I have issue changing cursor-type in Emacs 25.3 and 25.2 on Windows. Picture is worth thousand words, so here it is

No customization whatsoever.

I try to change cursor-type to a box directly or via frame parameters and it is always a bar. Even when cursor-type is set to t it is a bar Is there a way to change it ?

Answer 1

It looks like w32-use-visible-system-caret is non-nil. This can happen by default if Emacs detects some application is using the Accessibility API to track the position of the cursor - most commonly screen readers, and screen magnifiers. Such software often relies on the default Windows cursor being used and visible, rather than the customizable internal Emacs implementation of a cursor.

You can manually force this variable to nil in your startup files if you wish to continue using whatever software is triggering this, but have Emacs use its own cursor drawing. The other software may not work well with Emacs in that case however.