virtualbox.org

Can I disable the mouse capture? I'm using command line virtual machines only, so there's no real point in having my mouse disappear every time I open a guest.

thanks,
faitswulff

I could be wrong but I thought that the mouse didn't capture unless you clicked inside the guest window. You can still type if the guest window is the active window (which you can make it by clicking on its title bar or its icon on your dock/taskbar/whatever you want to call it.
As for disabling mouse capturing completely, I'm fairly certain that there isn't a way to achieve this. Perhaps it's something which should be considered as a feature for a later release - I can certainly see where it would be wanted.

I agree, if the mouse isn't usable in a "headless" terminal anyway, what's the point of capturing it? It's just annoying when you try to click away to another window. There already appears to be a ticket open, I'd suggesting chiming in there to raise its profile:
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/3506