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

git cursor git-bash
Jeffery Jones picture Jeffery Jones · Jan 21, 2015 · Viewed 28.2k times · Source

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?

Answer

SherylHohman picture SherylHohman · Apr 7, 2017

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

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