Cursor disappears in Mail 6 on Mountain Lion

Looking for a clarification on this matter. Is the problem with the lost insertion point happen if you just click on the window of another running application, with no hiding involved one way or the other, or does a hide Mail action required to for this problem to reveal itself?

Yes, it happens if I just click on the window of another running application, with no hiding involved one way or the other.

First post for me. I am not glad but interested others have this issue. I do as well. For no apparent reason other than moving from say one maibox to another or going back to my inbox, or especially if I follow a link in the email even from what I consider save sites my curser diappears. On some occasions by continued "banging" of the escape key it will come back. Most often I get so frustrated I just reboot my mac.

I am aslo looking for the resaon and fix to this annoyance. I am a convert from PC. May have to go back to PC! Oops no I won't 😁

Yes this is a very frustrating thing indeed. For me, it happens when I switch apps and hide others. I don't like the windows from other apps showing, only the front app. Originally was using "Application Switcher" to do this automatically but now I use "Keyboard Maestro" to do it. Unfortunately it produces the same problem in Mail. When I switch back to Mail the text cursor is gone so I just switch Mail windows back and forth to make it reappear.

It doesn't appear that Apple is interested in fixing this since we are now at 10.8.4 and nothing has been done about it despite many bug reports and this 8 page thread?

Wow, is it so bad you have to restart? Swithcing apps won't fix it? That is wierd. It's not at all that ”deep” of a problem for me.

Well here we are at OSX 10.8.5, most likely the last 10.8 update before 10.9 and guess what .... no fix for this issue. I guess it all fell on deaf ears?

OK .... so .... any bets on 10.9 and a grandfathered continuation ???

FWIW I think the problem is that Mail loses track of which window has focus, and consequently does not redraw the insertion bar in the message window.

A workaround is to switch from the active message window to the message viewer, then switch back to the message window.

This workaround works in Mavericks Mail and in Mountain Lion Mail.

To automate the above steps, here is an AppleScript that opens a new message viewer window, switches to it, then closes it, and switches back to the message window. The script hides these actions while they happen.

After copy-pasting this script to Script Editor, you can either save it as a script file in one of the Script Menu's folders in the user account's Library>Scripts folder and access the script from the Script Menu while in Mail, or you can save it as an application and assign a keyboard shortcut to it in Keyboard System Preference.

Hope this helps.

tell application "Mail"

set visible to false

makenewmessage viewer

activatemessage viewer 2

closewindow 1

set visible to true

end tell

Thank you!! I've been switching to the main Mail window then back to my message to re-appear the cursor, but your script works perfectly at accomplishing the same thing!

I'm not well versed in using AppleScript, but for others in my clueless boat, I had to save it as a "script bundle" for the AppleScript Editor to accept it. I also wasn't so good at the blank script (even pasting in), but opening a Mail template (File > New from Template > Mail) and replacing the sample script with yours, then saving as a bundle, was perfect.

Good job on the AppleScript. Just a bit sad that this problem is there at all…

Hi corinnafromsan juan capistrano,

Thank you for your posting.

Not sure how come that happened.

I have successfully saved the script both as a script file and as an application.

Hi Konnektor,

Thanks for submitting feedback to Apple about this issue.

Yes, the script is only a temporary workaround. Assigning it to a keystroke might be a more efficient way to refresh when needed.

I just tried "Airmail" out and guess what ... exactly the same problem (text cursor disappearance) happens same as it does in Mail 7.2

In my case it is definitely related to the "hide others" switching App I use. I don't like multiple apps showing in the background so I use an auto switcher app to hide all but the front app. This is what triggers the cursor disappearance in Mail. It also happens if I turn off the auto switcher app and do it manually (Hide Others) so that's how I know the cause. My fix is that I need to switch Mail windows to get the cursor back. I have learned to live with it but still it is a pain.

If memory serves me well, this all started with Lion (10.7) and has never been fixed up through Mavericks. It definitely did NOT happen in Snow Leopard.

Since a number of users have notified Apple about it, and it still exists after 3 generations of OSX (10.7-10.8-10.9) I am assuming they don't see it as a priority worth fixing? Bummer.