Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?
Cursor IDE
Describe the Bug
This may not actually be a Cursor issue, it might be a VSCode issue, but I am not really sure. This is a general overarching issue, on MacOSX in particular but its been a problem on Windows 11 as well, where when you click somewhere, the click does not register, and focus does not shift. This happens most prolifically with terminals, then chat prompt areas, but can affect most of the UI.
The problem also extends to weird LOSS of focus as well. Quick example. If I have text somewhere, usually the agent prompt but it can be in the terminal and some other parts of the UI. If my text cursor passes either outside the bounds of the “actual” text box, or perhaps over some other interactive element of the UI, my focus, which was previously in/on the text box and the text I was selecting, would be lost. Then if I try to copy the text I thought I selected, nothing copies, because the loss of focus dropped the selection as well. Another area this seems to happen often is the terminals…they seem to have an unknown, undefined…margin, around the actual literal terminal area. If selections are dragged over this margin area, focus is usually lost.
This focus loss issue is much more of an issue on MacOS X, than on Windows. Windows seems to have better focus tracking and preservation in general, so this may be an underlying UI component library issue.
In any case, this quirky, funky, inattentive approach to fucus, kind of makes navigating around the product challenging at times. When I click in a terminal, I expect that terminal to focus, immediately, with just the one click. It should not matter if I click some ill-defined border area, or drag over said ill-defined border area (or margin area). This stuff should just work, and it shouldn’t be a challenge to the developer, to deal with strange and subtle ui quirks like this.
Shifting focus to terminals, seems to be the most egregious “can’t focus it” issue that I have. Clicking on the terminal, anywhere, inside, in that ill-defined margin, on the scrollbar area, on the border…it really shouldn’t matter. A SINGLE click, should move focus to the terminal, and I should then immediately be able to type. As it stands right now, issues like this, often require me to click several times, to get focus to shift. A lot of this, seems to be because I accidentally clicked on the scrollbar area…which on macs, is impossible to really see since scrollbars vanish on mac a moment after you stop scrolling. My habit, which is deeply ingrained after decades of working in this industry, is to try and click near where the cursor will be in the prompt. Sometimes, though, that is only about a single character away from that margin/border area, and if I don’t very precisely position my cursor (and with macs…the darn text input cursor is a TERRIBLY designed cursor with a HORRIBLE center point…on windows, this cursor is MUCH better!), then I might not quite click explicitly inside the actual terminal (vs. margin or border or something that is technically, but not strictly, a part of the terminal.) So, it often takes a click, typing, realizing I’m not typing in the right area, figuring out where I AM typing (which is sometimes arbitrary, when a focus shift fails, it will often end up in the agent prompt, or perhaps the editor), remove any errant characters that I typed in the wrong location…and then finally…click, and click, and verify it actually focused, then finally type.
Steps to Reproduce
Click from say prompt, into terminal. Or editor, into terminal.
Click various parts of the terminal, to see if focus actually shifts or not. Its…quirky! (Especially on mac)
Expected Behavior
Single click, on any part of…terminal, editor, agent, file tree, etc. should instantly move the focus TO THAT area, without quirks, without complexity.
Operating System
Windows 10/11
MacOS
Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)
Version: 1.4.5 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: af58d92614edb1f72bdd756615d131bf8dfa5290
Date: 2025-08-13T02:08:56.371Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26100
Does this stop you from using Cursor
No - Cursor works, but with this issue