Mouse settings: Hide pointer while typing has no effect

In Windows 10 there is this option called "Hide pointer while typing" under
Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointer Options



The idea behind this option makes really sense.
However, it does not seem to have any effect on the following apps I tried. They all behave in the following ways regardless of whether this option is checked or not:

• Notepad and WordPad: Pointer is always hidden while typing.
• Notepad++: Pointer is never hidden while typing.
• MS Word 2016: Pointer is hidden while typing; however hitting the shift key makes it reappear, which of course happens all the time while typing resulting in a flickering pointer...

The behaviour of Word 2016 is the worst of all. While I would prefer the pointer really being hidden while typing, a pointer that is never hidden is still better than that flickering pointer!

Can anybody confirm this behaviour or knows how to resolve it?

Have you tried uninstalling mouse and removing driver software? Then reinstalling with latest driver.

Caledon Ken said:

Have you tried uninstalling mouse and removing driver software? Then reinstalling with latest driver.

That would be the driver of my touchpad "Synaptics SMBus TouchPad" because it is the same regardless of whether my USB mouse is plugged in or not. Before I do something like that, however, I would like to hear from someone who is not experiencing the same effects in their Windows 10. But thanks for the suggestion.

I'm sure you search professor google as well. A number of hits, different and same versions of word, all come back to printer, both driver and default. Hard to tell when reading as mouse pointer and typing cursor seemed to be used by people interchangeably. Sounds strange to me but worth a quick look to see if default printer is set the way you expect and that it has up to date driver.

There should be one driver for your touch pad and one for your USB mouse.

Articles also mentioned of Word addins and Macro's. Not a lot of users use these but you are likely more advance in Word than I. Bit be worth disabling all and re-enabling to rule out.

When your mouse pointer is flashing have you ever looked in task manager to see if any process(es) is/are grabbing CPU time. Might be a hidden clue.

For what is is worth my Word 2010 does not display this behavior but this software is two versions ago. Good luck.

Thanks for your additional suggestions.

Today though I checked two other PCs at the office both running Windows 10 with Word 2013 and Word 2016 respectively.

In Word 2013, everything is fine. I.e. the mouse pointer stays hidden while typing, even when you press the shift key.
In Word 2016, it was like I described: the mouse pointer always reappears when you press the shift key.

So I conclude that it must be a bug (feature??) of Word 2016.
That's what you get for being an early adopter.

I might open a bug report with Microsoft.


That the setting in mouse properties of Windows 10 does not have any effect on any program is still another issue. But this is not as bad as that annoying pointer flickering in Word 2016.