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gitgit-bash
Jeffery Jones
Jeffery Jones

Reputation: 581

Git Bash won't let me type anything, just shows a blinking cursor

I'm not able to type any characters at the Git-Bash command line; all it shows is a blinking cursor. Git Bash was working fine yesterday, but I'm not able to do anything on it now. What can I do to fix this?

Upvotes: 57

Views: 65423

Answers (10)

Stefan Zhelyazkov
Stefan Zhelyazkov

Reputation: 2981

What worked for me is to open Task Manager; there was a hung bash.exe process and I stopped it.

Upvotes: 0

Chris
Chris

Reputation: 3529

I ran into this today after cleaning the edges of my keyboard. I had hit a lot of keys in that time, numpad, ctrl, alt, shift, function keys, etc.

Then I found myself unable to type. Still worked fine in other programs but not git bash. Restarting it did nothing. Typing 'reset' did nothing. CTRL+C did nothing. 'q' did nothing.

The only thing that fixed it was changing to fullscreen and back (F11 for both). I have no idea why this worked.

Upvotes: 0

SoftAllan
SoftAllan

Reputation: 363

I use the Tab key to autofill the rest of a command, parameter or the like. However if I double tab on an empty command line the command line is unresponsive but the cursor is blinking as if is ready for input. What is happening is git is running in the background trying to find all the possibilities to list. In my case that turned out to be a lot. After a long time git responded with "Display all 5315 possibilities? (y or n)".

Trying to stop the process with CTRL+C does not work. Trying to close the window (MINGW64 console) does not work. This gives the impression that the shell has stopped working but Git is actually working on a task.

The answer to the question could therefore also be that Git is working but you cannot see this as the cursor is still blinking. In this case just have patience and the Git Bash will be responsive again.

Upvotes: 0

Sangeetha M Nair
Sangeetha M Nair

Reputation: 1

This worked for me

press:q enter or Close the git bash window and reopen it!

Upvotes: -2

Our Better Life
Our Better Life

Reputation: 9

reset (enter) is the solution for your cursor not blinking.

Upvotes: 0

Astro Boys
Astro Boys

Reputation: 1

Right click on the mouse will show you the short cut. In my case working with git-bash

ctrl + insert to copy

and shift + insert to paste

Upvotes: -2

SherylHohman
SherylHohman

Reputation: 17970

I found the answer to a problem with similar symptoms. I'll include it here for someone who finds this page looking for an answer, as I did.

In my case, the cursor didn't move, or show my typing onscreen.
However, it actually executed the command (if I pressed Enter), even though it looked like I didn't type anything in!

The solution was to type reset < Enter >

Turns out it can be an issue for any shell program (cmd, git bash, etc), not necessarily just a Git Bash issue.
It looks like Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Z can occasionally result in the terminal not echoing commands to the screen, depending on what process was running at the time it was killed.

reset restores it.

I found the solution, and the explanation why, at https://askubuntu.com/a/172747/636571

Upvotes: 130

Punit Tiwari
Punit Tiwari

Reputation: 9

Kill the server with CTRL+c in the command prompt window.

Upvotes: 0

Mohamed Foad
Mohamed Foad

Reputation: 41

I know this is may be late, but in case someone do like what happens with me. because closing visualize window solved cursor blink.

What happened?

I wrote a command -gitk which is used to visualize Git ( Great feature )

Then I tried to use git bash after while,I found only this blinking cursor. I tried many times to reset or even close it; however closing it caused an error so I got afraid of losing my work.

I closed the gitk visualize window and then Git bash restored as usual.

Link to gitk https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-A%3A-Git-in-Other-Environments-Graphical-Interfaces

Upvotes: 1

Zormi
Zormi

Reputation: 113

I have a similar problem, I can type commands and it will execute them, but I cannot see what I type. And the solution that works for me is to type q < Enter > and it back to normal.

Upvotes: 7

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