Bug Report: Plan/Debug Mode Buttons Inherit editorError.foreground Color

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Summary

Cursor’s Plan Mode and Debug Mode indicator buttons become invisible when users set editorError.foreground to transparent in their color customizations.

Problem

Cursor’s Plan Mode and Debug Mode UI buttons incorrectly inherit their text/icon color from editorError.foreground (and possibly editorWarning.foreground).

These color tokens are VS Code’s standard tokens for editor diagnostic squiggly underlines — the wavy lines that appear under errors and warnings in code. They have no semantic relationship to UI buttons or mode indicators.

What happens:

Setting Editor Squiggles Plan/Debug Buttons
editorError.foreground: #ff0000 Red underlines Red text/icons (wrong!)
editorError.foreground: #00000000 Hidden (intended) Invisible (broken!)

Why this is a valid user configuration:

Setting editorError.foreground to transparent is a common, well-documented customization. Developers do this to:

  • Reduce visual noise when using Error Lens (which shows errors inline as text)
  • View errors only in the Problems panel
  • Prefer cleaner editor aesthetics

This customization is unrelated to Cursor’s chat UI and should not affect it.

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Add to settings:
    "workbench.colorCustomizations": {
  "editorError.foreground": "#00000000"
}
  2. Open a Cursor chat/composer panel
  3. Observe: Plan Mode and Debug Mode buttons are invisible (both the codicon icon and the label text)

Expected Behavior

Expected Behavior

Plan Mode and Debug Mode buttons should use appropriate UI color tokens (e.g., foreground, button.foreground) and remain visible regardless of editorError.foreground settings.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.2.20
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: b3573281c4775bfc6bba466bf6563d3d498d1070
Date: 2025-12-12T06:29:26.017Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.1.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

2

Hey, thanks for the detailed report.

I confirm the issue with color inheritance. Passing this to the team for a fix.

I’ll update once there’s a fix.

4

This topic was automatically closed 22 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

8

This has been fixed in 2.5!