Add global scrollbar size and visibility settings

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Title

Add settings to make scrollbars wider and always visible everywhere (Explorer, Copilot, etc.)

Body

The scrollbar UX in Cursor is a major pain point. The scrollbars are:

  • Too thin – Especially in the Explorer, Copilot panel, and other sidebar/panel views. Hard to grab, especially for users with motor difficulties or high-DPI displays.
  • Auto-hiding – They fade out when not hovered, which wastes time hunting for them and makes the UI feel unpredictable.

Current limitations:

  • editor.scrollbar.verticalScrollbarSize and editor.scrollbar.horizontalScrollbarSize only affect the editor scrollbars
  • There are no settings to change scrollbar size or visibility in the Explorer, Copilot chat, terminal, or other workbench areas
  • VS Code upstream has explicitly declined this (issue #152113 – “Allow customizing workbench scrollbar sizes” was closed as not planned)

Request:
Please add workspace/user settings to:

  1. Control scrollbar width globally across all UI (Explorer, Copilot, panels, etc.), not just the editor
  2. Keep scrollbars always visible everywhere (no fade-out), matching the existing editor.scrollbar.vertical: "visible" behavior but applied to the whole workbench

This would greatly improve usability, especially for accessibility and productivity. The current behavior makes the UI feel unnecessarily difficult to work with.

5

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for the thorough write-up. The accessibility angle here is especially compelling.

You’re correct that the current editor.scrollbar.* settings only control the editor pane itself. There are no equivalent settings for the Explorer, AI chat panel, terminal, or other workbench areas.

This is something Cursor could address independently since we maintain our own UI layer, and we appreciate the detailed feedback — particularly the specific panels and use cases you’ve called out.

Best,
Mohit