Hi Liz,
I just tried this on my side and although I do not see a cursor in the
input field, its contents are already selected, meaning that I do not to
click there at all and can just start typing the new column name without
any other action.
This works with both Firefox and Chrome on Linux and I suspect this
should be cross-platform.
If I misunderstood your suggestion, feel free to reach out on the forum
as this mailing list will be closed:
https://forum.openrefine.org
Best,
Antonin