Blank window on startup with Cursor 2.1

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When I start Cursor, the window opens but the inside is basically empty/blank: no editor, no sidebars, no UI at all. The process itself is running, but the app is unusable because nothing is drawn.

My setup
OS: Windows 10
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1080
Nvidia driver: 560.94

Cursor 1.2 on the same machine worked fine.

What I tried:
If I start Cursor with GPU disabled:
“C:\Program Files\Cursor\Cursor.exe” --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer
the UI appears and the app works, but it’s noticeably laggy without hardware acceleration.

If I start it with ANGLE + OpenGL:
“C:\Program Files\Cursor\Cursor.exe” --use-angle=gl
then the UI shows up normally and the performance is good again. So the problem seems to be only with the default GPU rendering settings.

Steps to Reproduce

Install Cursor 2.1.x on Windows 10.

Launch Cursor normally (e.g. from Start menu / default shortcut, without any extra flags).

Wait for the main window to appear.

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.1.41 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 1321aa9140784391e83a406174345e818fe156f0
Date: 2025-11-30T18:58:57.968Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

2

Thanks for the excellent bug report and testing! The argv.json method is the best way to make this permanent:

Create/edit: %AppData%\Cursor\User\argv.json

Add:

{
    "use-angle": "gl"
}

Restart Cursor normally - the flag will apply automatically.

Your --use-angle=gl solution is actually better than just disabling GPU since it maintains good performance. This appears to be a rendering compatibility issue between Cursor 2.1’s Electron 37/Chromium 138 and the GTX 1080.

Also try:

  • Update to the latest Nvidia driver from nvidia.com - a similar issue with RTX 4050 was resolved by updating drivers
  • If problems persist, share logs from %AppData%\Cursor\logs\ (most recent folder)