Can’t disable MCP globally

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Can’t disable MCP globally: Cursor enables disabled MCP on any new workspace open.

How to disable MCP globally?

It’s a duplicate of closed How to disable MCP server. Still annoying :cry:

Steps to Reproduce

  1. mkdir foo bar
  2. Open Cursor in dir ‘foo’ as workspace: cursor ./foo/
  3. Go to Cursor settings, notice that MCP is enabled, disable it, close Cursor
  4. Open Cursor in dir ‘bar’ as workspace: cursor ./bar/
  5. Go to Cursor settings, notice that MCP is enabled again

If I open foo again - MCP will be disabled for it.
If I recreate foo rmdir foo && mkdir foo && cursor foo - MCP will be enabled again.

Expected Behavior

MCP is disabled in any workspace

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.5.5
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 823f58d4f60b795a6aefb9955933f3a2f0331d70
Date: 2025-08-25T17:40:25.290Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

2

Hey, thanks for the report. Yes, indeed, MCP servers are enabled for each workspace, and there is no option to disable them globally. However, if this is inconvenient, you can try creating a project-specific mcp.json file that lists specific MCP servers.

3

My use case: monorepos. As you can imagine, it’s inconvenient to place a mcp.json file in every app directory because some mcps I need from time to time. It’s great that we can have project-specific mcp.json files, but when they are absent, it would be better to respect global settings.

Is there a plan to fix this?

1 Like