All cursor commands in terminal stucks

[Hurtov_Oleksii]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

On macOS, the integrated terminal inside Cursor can become permanently unresponsive. After it happens, any command executed in Cursor’s terminal hangs indefinitely, including simple commands like echo and even process termination commands like kill/pkill. This persists even after restarting Cursor and the laptop. However, the same commands run instantly in a normal macOS Terminal.app, so the issue appears specific to Cursor’s integrated terminal session/PTY handling.

Steps to Reproduce

On macOS (Cursor using the integrated terminal), run a command that scans/greps/parses a any file
The command takes a long time or appears to stall.
after that cursor tries to kill that process.
Observe that the new command(s) also hang indefinitely.
Restart Cursor and even reboot the machine.
Reopen the project and verify that the integrated terminal is still stuck.

Expected Behavior

Cursor integrated terminal should continue to accept commands normally.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.6.20
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: b29eb4ee5f9f6d1cb2afbc09070198d3ea6ad760
Date: 2026-03-17T01:50:02.404Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 23.4.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

[Hurtov_Oleksii]

tried to change user settings zsh to bash - it didn’t help. Cursor cant even execute echo 123 command. It stucks forever

“terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.osx”: “bash”,

“terminal.integrated.profiles.osx”: {

“bash”: {

“path”: “/bin/bash”

},

“zsh”: {

“path”: “/bin/zsh”

},

[deanrie]

Hey, I can see the screenshot. The agent terminals have a bunch of stuck commands, including a simple echo. This looks like a known PTY leak issue on macOS.

Try opening the regular Terminal.app and run:

ps -ax -o pid=,ppid=,comm= | awk '$3=="cursor-shell" && $2==1 {print $1}' | wc -l

If the number is above zero, you have orphaned cursor-shell processes that are taking up all PTYs. You can kill them like this:

ps -ax -o pid=,ppid=,comm= | awk '$3=="cursor-shell" && $2==1 {print $1}' | xargs -n 50 kill

After that, the terminal in Cursor should start working again. A detailed breakdown is here: Cursor PTY Exhaustion Causing Terminal Failures (macOS)

If there are no orphaned processes, or killing them didn’t help, share the output of the first command wc -l so we can dig deeper. The team is aware of this class of bugs, but your case could still help with further investigation.

[Hurtov_Oleksii]

@deanrie

ps -ax -o pid=,ppid=,comm= | awk '$3=="cursor-shell" && $2==1 {print $1}' | xargs -n 50 kill

Hi! Thank you for the answer, but these commands didn’t help
Here are some screenshots

Commands continue to stuck and cursor tries to execute any other commands there are stucks too

[Hurtov_Oleksii]

well, reinstall the cursor fix the error

[deanrie]

Good to hear reinstalling fixed it. Since the orphaned cursor-shell processes weren’t the cause, it was most likely a corrupted terminal state in the workspace storage, not a PTY leak.

If it happens again, you can try a less drastic option before reinstalling and delete the workspace storage folder:

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage

This clears the cached terminal state without a full reinstall. You’ll lose some workspace-specific settings and chat history, but nothing critical. Make a backup first.

Let me know if the issue comes back.