Complex formulas break Markdown rendering in Cursor Mobile (iOS)

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor for iOS

Describe the Bug

When an agent replies with complex formulas, the mobile Markdown renderer often fails. Instead of formatted math/text, I see raw symbols and broken markup. Asking a model (e.g. Composer 2.5) to “output as Markdown” sometimes fixes it, but not reliably.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Cursor Mobile on iPhone 16 (iOS 26).
  2. Start a chat (no repo) with any model (also tried Composer 2.5).
  3. Ask a question that needs complex formulas (math, physics, etc.).
  4. Observe the reply: formulas often render as raw symbols and break Markdown.
  5. Follow up: “Please output the same answer as Markdown.”
    Sometimes the second reply renders correctly; sometimes it still breaks.

Expected Behavior

Agent replies with complex formulas should render as clean Markdown on iOS: readable math, headings, lists, and code. Formulas should look like formatted text, not raw symbols.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

photo_2026-08-12_20-41-48.jpg
photo_2026-08-12_20-41-48.jpg1179×2556 129 KB

Operating System

Other

Version Information

IOS app version 1.6.0 (39018)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

7

Hi @montelnv Thanks for the post. You shouldn’t be seeing that, and it isn’t caused by anything in your setup. The iOS app doesn’t render LaTeX math in agent replies today, so formulas show as raw TeX. Characters like _, *, and \ inside those formulas can also throw off the rest of the Markdown. Desktop Cursor does render this.

We’ve let the team know, and this is an issue we’re tracking. No timeline to share yet.

Asking the model to “output as Markdown” can still leave LaTeX in the reply, which is why that only helps sometimes. A more reliable workaround on iOS is to ask it to write the math in plain text, or to put the formulas in a fenced code block so the Markdown parser leaves them alone.