As increasing numbers of applications provide the dark mode color scheme that I prefer, I have sometimes found that the standard black pointer caret can become nearly invisible against a dark background. I’ve gone crazy looking for color overrides in those applications with no success, but I recently found a mention somewhere about changing the pointer scheme in Windows to use icons that are more compatible with dark colors.
For every Windows box I have ever used, I have used the default mouse pointer and caret options. It never even occurred to me that there might be other icon sets, called schemes, that you could use instead.
Sure enough, if you open the Mouse Properties dialog in Windows, and select the Pointers tab, you will see a bunch of alternative pointer schemes. Some of these, notably the Windows Black variants, work really well on dark backgrounds. They do this by surrounding the black pointers and carets with an outline of white. When you are over a standard white background, you simply see the the black cursor. But, over a dark background, the white clearly stands out. My problem has been solved!
