Cant get chat window bg back to normal after agent mode

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I switched the layout to agent mode and when I switched it back the chat window retained the bgcolor of the code/edit windows instead of reverting to the darker chat/sidepanel windows. Help! it’s too bright/blends into the editor views now. Is there something somewhere to fix?

Steps to Reproduce

not sure, select agent views and when you try and go back to editor it doesnt appear to reset the bg of the chat window.

Expected Behavior

chat window bg shares the sidepanel colors of the agents/filebrowsers, not the editor panels in the middle.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.4.23
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 379934e04d2b3290cf7aefa14560f942e4212920
Date: 2026-01-29T21:24:23.350Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Early Access
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

e.g. the chat window should be th same color as the leftpanel

image
image2946×316 12.7 KB

4

Hey, thanks for the report. I can see the screenshot, the chat background really does look different from the left panel.

A couple of questions:

  1. Which theme are you using? (Settings > Color Theme)
  2. Do you have any UI customization extensions installed (like Custom CSS, Apc Customize UI, etc.)?
  3. Do you have any custom workbench.colorCustomizations in settings.json?
  4. Does the issue still happen after restarting Cursor?

As a temporary workaround, try switching to a different theme and then back.

5

I have these settings

“workbench.colorTheme”: “Tomorrow Night Blue”,
“workbench.colorCustomizations”: {
“editor.background”: “#130c61”,
“editor.foreground”: “#f5ddb3”,
“terminal.foreground”: “#f5ddb3”,
“editorCursor.foreground”: “#FFFF00”
},

strangely its been working for year+. Some pop up appeared “try agent layout” i think it was or similar, clicked okay. It rearranged everything. Didnt like it, so went back to “Editor” layout and the color was broken from that point. Restart/nothing else will resolve.

When the app is starting I can see the bg colors are absolutely correct

image
image2792×776 65.8 KB

but once the chat window appears on the right it brings with it the wrong bg color overlaying the right bgcolor..

6

Any thoughts here @deanrie ?

7

Hey, sorry for the late reply. Based on your description, it looks like after switching layouts the chat panel started using editor.background instead of the sidebar background color.

Try adding this to workbench.colorCustomizations in your settings.json to explicitly set the chat panel background:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
    "editor.background": "#130c61",
    "editor.foreground": "#f5ddb3",
    "terminal.foreground": "#f5ddb3",
    "editorCursor.foreground": "#FFFF00",
    "sideBar.background": "#002451",
    "panel.background": "#002451"
}

(Replace #002451 with any dark color that matches your theme’s sidebar. This is the default sidebar color for Tomorrow Night Blue.)

If that doesn’t help, also try:

  1. Open the Command Palette Cmd+Shift+P and run “Reset View Locations”
  2. Then restart Cursor

Let me know if that fixes it, or if the issue is still happening.

8

Hi Dean, sadly it looks like someone changed the chat panel to be the editor color instead of the sidebar color, need to get that reverted. Changing editor bg changes the right chat panel color. Might be a bug where it thinks the chat is in “editor” mode so picking up the editor color instead of sidebar mode and picking up the sidebar color.