This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

When typing or clicking in a blank field, caret jumps right then left in an instant.

  • 1 reply
  • 0 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

The "ghost" caret also appears when I'm pressing left or right arrow keys to move the caret. It seems to be white, even when the real caret is black on white background. It is easily seen when a text field background is a dark color. It appears for about one frame, my screen refresh rate is 60Hz.

It doesn't seem to be a "fake" caret or merely a graphical element. When I'm editing a field of text, eg. in Google Docs, I've occasionally started editing or selecting text one character to the right. Like as if in that split second I just happened to send the keystroke when the ghost caret appeared. But because it was so brief, it is near impossible to replicate.

I've tried Firefox in safe-mode and there was no ghost caret. So I removed all add-ons/extensions, but the ghost caret still appears even if I have no extensions installed, which is why it's so baffling. I've refreshed and re-installed Firefox, both didn't work.

This "ghosting" only happens in Firefox, not in IE nor Chrome.

I used a screen capturing software and recorded this problem, then extracted a frame from the video to show the real caret and ghost caret side by side. Hope this better illustrates what I'm seeing. I have Dark Reader activated so the ghost caret can be easily seen. If Dark Reader isn't activated, it would be impossible to see due to the white background.

I do most of my work on cloud based platforms so this ghosting is very annoying and distracting. Or worse, could it be a keylogger or malicious program causing this?

Please help, Thank you!

The "ghost" caret also appears when I'm pressing left or right arrow keys to move the caret. It seems to be white, even when the real caret is black on white background. It is easily seen when a text field background is a dark color. It appears for about one frame, my screen refresh rate is 60Hz. It doesn't seem to be a "fake" caret or merely a graphical element. When I'm editing a field of text, eg. in Google Docs, I've occasionally started editing or selecting text one character to the right. Like as if in that split second I just happened to send the keystroke when the ghost caret appeared. But because it was so brief, it is near impossible to replicate. I've tried Firefox in safe-mode and there was no ghost caret. So I removed all add-ons/extensions, but the ghost caret still appears even if I have no extensions installed, which is why it's so baffling. I've refreshed and re-installed Firefox, both didn't work. This "ghosting" only happens in Firefox, not in IE nor Chrome. I used a screen capturing software and recorded this problem, then extracted a frame from the video to show the real caret and ghost caret side by side. Hope this better illustrates what I'm seeing. I have Dark Reader activated so the ghost caret can be easily seen. If Dark Reader isn't activated, it would be impossible to see due to the white background. I do most of my work on cloud based platforms so this ghosting is very annoying and distracting. Or worse, could it be a keylogger or malicious program causing this? Please help, Thank you!
Attached screenshots

All Replies (1)

more options

You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

Close and restart Firefox after modifying the setting for changes to take effect.

You can check if there is an update for your graphics display driver and check for hardware acceleration related issues.