terminal: Cursor does not blink in WSL and after leaving it too.

Not a WSL issue as issue persists even after exiting WSL in the tab that had WSL. Even if it was causing issue when using WSL shell, leaving it and going back to PS should undo it.

As far as I’m aware, there is no terminal state that is automatically reset when returning from WSL to PowerShell. So if you’ve turned off the cursor blinking in WSL, it’s expected to remain turned off when you exit back to PS.

Also, tested WSL shell in Cmder[https://github.com/cmderdev/cmder] based on ConEmu. Works perfectly. So most probably Windows Terminal issue.

If you’ve got a script that’s turning off the cursor blink, it’s probably doing so with private mode 12 which ConEmu doesn’t support. So again it wouldn’t be surprising that you’re not seeing the same issue in Cmder.

In any event, if you want to try turning the cursor blink back on manually, you can do so in PowerShell with:

echo `e[?12h

And in a WSL shell with:

printf "\e[?12h"

If that works, I’d suggest looking at your shell config, as @dkter suggested, to see if there is something there that is forcing the cursor blink off.

@Anutrix Thanks for those details. I can reproduce the issue with that config. But as far as I can see, it is in fact the powerlevel0k theme that is disabling the cursor blinking.

If you take a look at the code in pt0k.zsh, you’ll see a number of references to cnorm, for example here: https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k/blob/0c197ed4a51e10ed613e48a080f23b1ee7968006/internal/p10k.zsh#L7659

As explained in the ncurses FAQ, there are three cursor capabilities:

• civis - makes the cursor invisible
• cnorm - makes the cursor appear normal
• cvvis - makes the cursor very visible

“Very visible” generally means the cursor is blinking, and “normal” generally means it isn’t blinking. For example, if you look at the terminfo for xterm-256color, you’ll see cnorm defined as \E[?12l\E[?25h. That disables private mode 12 (which disables the blinking), and enables private mode 25 (which makes the cursor visible).

The bottom line is that whenever p10k executes echoti cnorm, it’s disabling the cursor blinking.

Here’s a recorded video of my screen demonstrating this:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/26527405/175792518-8e3d54a3-638d-4c0d-91f2-50d7b22fadf6.mp4

Might be helpful.

Broken for me. Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL2. I also tested with a fresh install on a new computer, did the same.

It works at first and as long as I stay in the shell (bash), but once I open anything that uses curses, it stops flashing. I saw it first with tmux, but also tested with vi, top, htop.

It might be related to the gibberish that comes out on first starting tmux since one of the Windows updates and/or Linux updates (I updated both at the same time, I’m not sure which really caused it):

^[[?61;6;7;22;23;24;28;32;42c[16:36:31][:user/]$ 61;6;7;22;23;24;28;32;42c

I can get the flashing back with printf "\e[?12h" once I get back to the shell. But it’s not a solution!

Powerlevel10k https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k/commit/e72264e01cb24431455ed6e398a769bca0da7ffe seems to be the version with the fix. Closing as fixed.

Do comment if it’s still broken for anyone.