20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs
Cursor Blink Underline
Link text stays solid; only a CLI-style cursor caret bar underneath blinks at the exact 60bpm cadence terminals use. The link reads as "ready for input" without any text flicker.
Cursor Blink Underline the 6th of 20 designs in the 20 CSS Link Hover Effect Designs collection. The design is implemented in pure CSS — no JavaScript required. Copy the HTML and CSS panels below into your project. Because the demo is pure CSS, it works in any framework or templating engine you happen to use. The design honours prefers-reduced-motion and uses real semantic markup, so it ships accessibility-ready out of the box.
Live preview
The code
<a href="#" class="cle-curblink">Open editor</a>
.cle-curblink {
position: relative;
display: inline-block;
padding-bottom: 6px;
color: #00e5ff;
font:
600 16px/1.2 ui-monospace,
"SF Mono",
monospace;
text-decoration: none;
letter-spacing: 0.02em;
transition:
color 0.2s,
text-shadow 0.25s;
}
.cle-curblink::after {
content: "";
position: absolute;
left: 0;
bottom: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 2px;
background: #00e5ff;
transform-origin: left;
animation: cle-curblink-pulse 1s steps(1, end) infinite;
}
.cle-curblink:hover,
.cle-curblink:focus-visible {
color: #fff;
text-shadow: 0 0 12px rgba(0, 229, 255, 0.55);
}
.cle-curblink:hover::after,
.cle-curblink:focus-visible::after {
background: #fff;
box-shadow: 0 0 8px rgba(0, 229, 255, 0.7);
}
@keyframes cle-curblink-pulse {
0%,
50% {
opacity: 1;
}
51%,
100% {
opacity: 0;
}
}
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
.cle-curblink::after {
animation: none;
opacity: 1;
}
}