dynamic cursorShape for shell vi mode #6631

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opened 2026-01-31 00:43:29 +00:00 by claunia · 0 comments
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Originally created by @mpgarate on GitHub (Feb 27, 2020).

Hello Terminal team 👋

Description of the new feature/enhancement

When normal mode is active in vim or shell vi mode, the cursor stays in the same style ("bar"). On mac and linux terminals the cursor would typically change to something like the "emptyBox" shape for normal mode and "bar" for insert mode.

To reproduce this behavior, we can use Windows Terminal to run cygwin or access a linux machine via ssh and run the following:

set -o vi

Then, pressing escape will enter normal mode where we might expect to see a box highlighting the current letter. Instead we still see the "bar" style, moved one character back. The "box" appearance is helpful to see which character is selected and as a visual aid to know when insert or normal mode is active.

I found a few workarounds for vim using vimrc (i.e. in issue #68) but have not yet seen a suggestion for shell vi mode.

Originally created by @mpgarate on GitHub (Feb 27, 2020). Hello Terminal team 👋 # Description of the new feature/enhancement When normal mode is active in vim or shell vi mode, the cursor stays in the same style ("bar"). On mac and linux terminals the cursor would typically change to something like the "emptyBox" shape for normal mode and "bar" for insert mode. To reproduce this behavior, we can use Windows Terminal to run cygwin or access a linux machine via ssh and run the following: ```sh set -o vi ``` Then, pressing escape will enter normal mode where we might expect to see a box highlighting the current letter. Instead we still see the "bar" style, moved one character back. The "box" appearance is helpful to see which character is selected and as a visual aid to know when insert or normal mode is active. I found a few workarounds for vim using vimrc (i.e. in issue #68) but have not yet seen a suggestion for shell vi mode.
claunia added the Issue-QuestionNeeds-Tag-FixResolution-Answered labels 2026-01-31 00:43:29 +00:00
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Reference: starred/terminal#6631