Cursor AI Panel Preference

[Utkucan]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

In Cursor, I currently have two chat panels:

The default chat window, which always opens on the right.

A manually opened chat, which I create by dragging from the left sidebar (clicking “New Agent” and dragging it to the right). This opens a new chat instance, but only if I drag it — if I just click, it still opens in the default right-side panel.

What I want is to make the left-side chat my default. This way, I can easily open multiple new chats, switch between them, and manage them more flexibly. Also, there’s a key difference in behavior:

If I close a chat from the right panel, it properly ends the session.

But if I close it from the left “All Chats” pane, it just deletes the chat from history — which I don’t want.

So currently, I manually drag a new chat to the right, then middle-click to close it properly. Otherwise, the chat gets deleted from history.

My question is: How can I set the left-side chat panel (the one I manually open) as the default, so that all new chats open there by default and I can manage them more reliably?

Steps to Reproduce

Clicking the AI Pane toggle in the top-right opens the default chat window on the right side.

Opening All Chats from the left pane (next to the Source Control icon) lets me create a New Agent.

If I left-click the new agent, it opens in the default right-side chat pane.

But if I click and drag the agent to the left of the right pane, it opens a separate chat window — which is exactly what I want.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.7.54 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 5c17eb2968a37f66bc6662f48d6356a100b67be0
Date: 2025-10-21T19:07:38.476Z
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

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. As I understand it, you want the multi‑tab chat window (the one that appears when dragging from “All Agent”) to open by default instead of the single chat panel.

There’s currently no setting to change this behavior. The Cmd+I shortcut and the AI toggle always open the single‑panel chat on the right. This is a great feature request, the ability to make the tabbed window the default chat interface.

For now, your workaround is the only option: drag new chats from “All Agent” to open them in the tabbed window.

[Utkucan]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response and for noting it as a feature request—appreciate the acknowledgment.

I dug deeper and found the root cause/fix myself: The issue stems from importing VSCode settings during Cursor’s initial setup. If you choose to import from VSCode at startup, it triggers this behavior.

If you skip the import (or start fresh without it), new chats open in the desired tabbed multi-chat window by default.

This seems like a settings migration conflict worth investigating. Let me know if you need more details or reproduction steps.

I reinstalled Cursor from fresh but if users doesn’t want to freshly install they just need to clear app data: Troubleshooting Guide | Cursor Docs just do the step3 and it will start like fresh.