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The caret in Glassine is drawn by the app, not by the text system, so it can move the way a thing moves: when you press an arrow key, click somewhere, or type, it glides to the new position over about a quarter of a second, easing out, instead of vanishing from one place and appearing in another. It takes its colour from the theme — usually the accent — and its blink is a soft fade rather than an on-off flicker. When typing carries it to another line — a word wrapping at the margin, or Return — the glide takes a quarter longer than usual. The long diagonal back to the left is a bigger move than a step to the next letter, and the extra beat lets it read as one motion rather than a jump. Everything about it is in Settings → Caret, where a line of text with the caret gliding along it shows each setting as you change it.

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Shapes

Every shape is built on the same bar, so it glides, blinks and takes the width and colour you set the same way; what differs is what is drawn with it. Pick one in the row under Width — each is drawn there as it will look between two letters.

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Tricks

Leave the caret alone for a few seconds — two and a half to four — and it does a trick: a hop with a squash on landing, a bounce that settles in three, a flip (a cartwheel in the air), a wiggle like a shake of the head, a stretch like a yawn, or a lean, as if to look at the next word. Then another every four to nine seconds, never the same one twice running, until you type, click or move it, which ends the show at once. Every shape performs, tail, halo and all; the blink holds steady while it does. Tricks when idle in the Caret settings turns them off. If Reduce Motion is on in System Settings → Accessibility, gliding and the tricks are turned off automatically and the caret behaves like a standard one. The same switch stills every other animation in the app; the small delights page lists them.