CRITICAL: Cursor Helper (retrieval-always-local) Writing 30GB+ Automatically on Launch (Mac)

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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Opening Cursor (without any user interaction) immediately triggers a background process:

Cursor Helper (Plugin): extension-host (retrieval-always-local)

This process begins writing large amounts of data to disk continuously.

Observed Behavior
• Occurs simply by opening Cursor
• No agent interaction required
• Disk writes escalate rapidly (30GB+ within minutes)
• Activity Monitor shows sustained high write rates
• System becomes noticeably sluggish

Steps to Reproduce

1.	Open Cursor
2.	Do nothing
3.	Observe Activity Monitor → Disk tab
4.	“Cursor Helper (Plugin) – retrieval-always-local” begins writing continuously

Expected Behavior

Impact
• Disk usage increased from ~786 GB to ~957 GB during testing
• Risk of completely filling disk
• Significant system slowdown
• Requires manual force quit to stop

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.6.21
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: fea2f546c979a0a4ad1deab23552a43568807590
Date: 2026-03-21T22:09:10.098Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Additional Information

Reproducibility
• Happens consistently on my machine
• Occurs simply by opening Cursor and waiting
• No agent interaction required

Version Comparison
• This issue does NOT occur on another Mac running an older version of Cursor
• Suggests a regression introduced in a recent update

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

5

Hey, this is a known issue. .pack files in ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/snapshots/ can grow without limits. Main thread: .pack eating up disk space

Just deleting the folder won’t help since the files get recreated as soon as Cursor starts.

Right now there’s only one working workaround: roll back to version 2.5, where the issue doesn’t happen. Older versions are available at Cursor · Download.

Before rolling back, you can free up space by deleting ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/snapshots/ while Cursor is closed.

The team is aware of the bug, but there’s no ETA for a fix yet. Your report helps us prioritize it.

6

A post was merged into an existing topic: .pack eating up disk space