Clicking on tabs immediately activates a different editor window

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

After some time, clicking on any tab on any window other than the main editor window will immediately activate a different window, making all windows other than the main editor almost impossible to use.

Steps to Reproduce

  • Open a new editor window.
  • Open several tabs.
  • Move tabs to another window.
  • Wait. (Usually takes an hour or three. Reloading the workspace may help.)
  • Click on a tab in any window other than the main one.

Result: Another window will immediately activate and be brought to the front, seemingly chosen at random. (Though tabs within any given window consistently map to the same wrong window for the duration of the bug.)

Expected Behavior

Tabs should continue to work as normal.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.5.17
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 7b98dcb824ea96c9c62362a5e80dbf0d1aae4770
Date: 2026-02-17T05:58:33.110Z (1 wk ago)
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.3.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Additional Information

This effectively makes cursor unusable, unless you work entirely within a single window. This is easily enough of a headache to push me back to standard VS Code.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

1 Like

I am also getting the exact same issue! Really really annoying!

Hi @deanrie I wanted to add a bit more context in case it helps, though I’m not completely certain about the exact trigger since I was testing this on Windows in a clean workspace.

I was able to reproduce the issue by opening multiple windows (6–7), moving tabs between them, then performing selective Reload Window operations on some (but not all) windows. After that, clicking a tab in one secondary window consistently activated a different specific window instead. The behavior wasn’t random each affected window seemed to map consistently to the same incorrect target window.

There were no relevant errors in DevTools when the focus jump occurred, which makes me think this may not be an exception or rendering issue, but rather a window focus routing or window ID desynchronization problem possibly related to how BrowserWindow instances are registered or restored after partial reloads.

If that’s directionally correct, one possible area to inspect could be the window registry / focus resolution logic after reload events, especially in multi-window scenarios where some windows are reloaded and others are not.

Not 100% sure this is the root cause, but hopefully the reproduction pattern and observation about the consistent window mapping help narrow it down.

1 Like

@Michael_227 @fscm44xyz Could you please include your version/system information (Cursor > About Cursor or Help > About) like @abarnat did above? It would help us figure out if it’s specific to a version, an OS, etc.

For now, I haven’t been able to reproduce this.

Version: 2.6.11 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 8c95649f251a168cc4bb34c89531fae7db4bd990
Date: 2026-03-03T18:57:48.001Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.6.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Thanks @Colin I only did test trying to help !!