I'm curious about this feature, which has been part of Windows for as long as I can remember. Maybe even Windows 95 or 98.
To me, it means exactly what it says. The mouse cursor should become invisible as I'm typing. OS/X has this feature, and it actually works. However, from what I can tell either:
- It's completely broken on Windows and has been forever.
- It's up to the App to implement this feature, or call into some API or OS hook to implement it properly.
So far, this is what I've found:
- Notepad, as I recall, works and respects this setting. I can't test right now because I have Notepad2, which replaces Notepad. Notepad2 does not respect this setting.
- Visual Studio does not.
- IE does not.
- Microsoft Word does, but it actually hides the mouse cursor regardless of whether or not this setting is enabled. Perhaps the Office team implemented this functionality internally.
- Some SKUs of Windows seem to behave differently. For example, I have one friend that says the feature works for IE, but he's on a Surface.
Has anyone found an app that will actually hide the mouse cursor if and only if this setting is enabled? If no such app exists, does this checkbox actually do anything? From a Windows API point of view, what OS hooks are provided that developers are supposed to use to take advantage of this feature?