Mouse cursor blinking/flickering after launching Anki Desktop

[ankiUserA]

Anki Version

26.05 (e64c6b1a)⁩

Operating System

Windows 11 Pro Insider Preview, 26H1, OS Build 28120.2374

Hardware Environment

• CPU/GPU: Intel i9-13980HX + RTX 4060 Laptop
• Mouse: Logitech G102, Driver Version: 152.0.10, Polling Rate: 1000Hz

Expected Behavior

Anki launches normally and the mouse cursor functions properly.

Actual Behavior

Immediately upon launching Anki, the system mouse cursor starts blinking rapidly, disappearing and reappearing randomly.

What makes this issue extremely severe is its persistence: Even after completely terminating the Anki process, the mouse cursor continues to blink uncontrollably across the entire Windows OS. It seems to trap the Windows Desktop Window Manager or the input layer in an infinite loop. The only way to restore the cursor is a full system reboot.

Actions Taken (All Failed)

To narrow down the cause, I have attempted the following troubleshooting steps, none of which resolved the issue:

1. Restarting GPU Drivers: Pressed Win + Ctrl + Shift + B. The screen refreshed, but the cursor continued to blink.
2. Switching GPUs: Forced the application to run on Dedicated GPU / Integrated GPU. No effect.
3. Restarting Windows Explorer: Terminated and restarted explorer.exe via Task Manager. No effect.
4. Forcing Software Rendering: Created gldriver6 with software to bypass hardware acceleration. The issue persists.
5. Safe Mode: Launched Anki while holding Shift (disabling all add-ons). The issue still stable reproduces.
6. Isolating Input Devices: Unplugged the physical USB mouse entirely and used the laptop touchpad. The flickering behavior remained exactly the same, confirming it is not a specific mouse driver issue, but a deep system-wide cursor layer corruption.

Additional Notes

Since the legacy Qt5 builds are no longer provided in recent updates, I am completely locked out of using Anki Desktop due to this Qt6/Chromium graphics or input handling conflict. Any insights or workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

[Danika_Dakika]

@ankiUserA

2 – Switching GPUs: Forced the application to run on Dedicated GPU / Integrated GPU. No effect.

4-- Forcing Software Rendering: Created gldriver6 with software to bypass hardware acceleration. The issue persists.

Does that mean you tried all of the video-driver options available to you in Tools > Preferences (and restarted after each change)? Troubleshooting - Anki Manual

Was this a fresh install of Anki 26.05 on a system that didn’t have Anki installed before? Or were you upgrading from another Anki version that didn’t have this issue – and if so, what version? Or did this start happening abruptly, unrelated to an Anki update?

[ankiUserA]

@Danika_Dakika

Does that mean you tried all of the video-driver options available to you in Tools > Preferences (and restarted after each change)?

Yes. I did try all of those options (Direct 3D, OpenGL, Vulkan & Software) and restart the app after each change. However, the issue persists.

@Danika_Dakika

were you upgrading from another Anki version that didn’t have this issue – and if so, what version?

I was using v25.09.2 which didn’t have this issue before. Once I upgraded Anki using the latest msi installer of v26.05 yesterday, this flickering bug popped up. Maybe I should have upgraded Anki to v25.09.4 first?

[abdo]

@ankiUserA

What makes this issue extremely severe is its persistence: Even after completely terminating the Anki process, the mouse cursor continues to blink uncontrollably across the entire Windows OS. It seems to trap the Windows Desktop Window Manager or the input layer in an infinite loop. The only way to restore the cursor is a full system reboot.

This sounds like a Windows issue, considering you’re using a preview build.