Allow users to customise which Markdown preview the Preview button opens

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

Cursor IDE

Describe the request

Cursor currently has two Markdown preview experiences:

  • The inline Preview | Markdown editor
  • The standard Markdown preview opened by Markdown: Open Preview / Ctrl+Shift+V

Please add a setting that allows users to choose which preview implementation the top-right Preview button opens.

For example:

Markdown Preview: Preview Button

  • Inline Preview
  • Standard Markdown Preview

This would let users keep the convenient Preview button while choosing the preview implementation they actually prefer.

I need this because the Preview has a bug now of adding extra whitespaces to table data therefore messing it up in the markdown format.

Operating System (if it applies)

Windows 10/11

5

Hey, thanks for the feature request. The idea of letting you choose which preview a button opens makes sense, I’ll pass it to the team as feedback.

About tables: what you’re seeing isn’t a separate bug, it’s how inline Preview works. When you edit and save a document in Preview mode, the editor does round-trip serialization and normalizes the Markdown, including reformatting tables. A full preview that doesn’t change the source already exists, open it via Markdown: Open Preview or Ctrl+Shift+V, it won’t touch your markup.

A couple things that help right now:

  • Edit the file in Markdown mode, not Preview, and your tables will stay as-is. Each file remembers the last selected mode, so files left in Markdown mode will keep opening raw.
  • For viewing, use the standard preview Ctrl+Shift+V, it’s full-fidelity.

If you want to help push for inline preview customization, add your vote in this thread: Expose customization settings for inline Markdown Preview

Let me know if this workaround doesn’t cover your use case.