How to change the cursor type and color?

Question

I would like to change the cursor, like in Terminal, from the block to the I-Beam cursor.

From this:

To this:

How would I do this?

Also, on a side note, how do I change the color of the cursor?

Answer 1

In order to change your cursor or caret, what you want to do is:

Open your .emacs file and this line of code:

(setq-default cursor-type 'bar) 

And to change the color:

(set-cursor-color "#ffffff") 

Of course, you can change #ffffff to any hexadecimal color.

Answer 2

Cursor type can be set for a given buffer (using buffer-local variable cursor-type), as indicated in the answer by @King. (That answer uses setq-default to set the default value for all buffers.)

Or it can be set for a given frame, as frame parameter cursor-type.

You can set it the default cursor type for all frames by adding it to option default-frame-alist. For example add this item to the alist: (cursor-type . bar).

Here is a command (from library oneonone.el) to set the cursor type for the current frame:

(defun 1on1-set-cursor-type (cursor-type)
  "Set the cursor type of the selected frame to CURSOR-TYPE.
When called interactively, prompt for the type to use.
To get the frame's current cursor type, use `frame-parameters'."
  (interactive
   (list (intern (completing-read
                   "Cursor type: "
                   (mapcar 'list '("box" "hollow" "bar" "hbar" nil))))))
  (modify-frame-parameters (selected-frame) (list (cons 'cursor-type cursor-type))))

Cursor color is always per-frame, not per-buffer.

In library oneonone.el you will also find options to automatically change the cursor type when you switch a buffer between read-only and writable, or between overwrite mode and insert mode, or to change the type to a box cursor (more noticeable) when Emacs is idle.