Cursor becomes unresponsive - very high cpu usage

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

After a period of time (15 to 30 minutes) my system grinds to a virtual standstill making it completely unusable. I have seen similar threads here but decided to raise this one as my circumstances may not be exactly the same.

Steps to Reproduce

Open the IDE and start working.

Expected Behavior

The system should continue to operate without freezing and overheating.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Screenshot 2026-06-19 at 15.56.24.png
Screenshot 2026-06-19 at 15.56.24.png2430×1276 351 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.8.11
VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1
Commit: e56ad3440df06d22ca7501e65fd518e905486ef0
Date: 2026-06-18T01:40:18.333Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 40.10.3
Chromium: 144.0.7559.236
Node.js: 24.15.0
V8: 14.4.258.32-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.256
OS: Darwin x64 24.6.0

Additional Information

  • This seems to have started happening around 2-4 weeks ago.
  • I have created some sample files but don’t see a way to upload them?
    sample Cursor 10 -file ~/sampleX.txt
  • I am running on a MacBook Pro (2019, Intel) with 32Gb RAM and have not had this problem until recently.
  • I have tried deleting old chat sessions, no difference
  • I have deleted ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/ and re-installed Cursor - no difference

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report. To figure out what’s actually using CPU, we need to narrow it down. A couple quick checks:

  1. Open Process Explorer: Cmd+Shift+P > Developer: Open Process Explorer. When the system starts freezing, check which process is spiking CPU like extensionHost, ptyHost, renderer, retrieval/ripgrep. Send a screenshot.

  2. Start Cursor with extensions disabled from Terminal:

cursor --disable-extensions

Use it for 20 to 30 minutes and see if the freeze happens again. This will tell us if an extension is causing it.

  1. What project is open when it happens? Is it a big repo with lots of files, and is indexing running? I’ve seen a similar case where retrieval spawned runaway rg workers on large node_modules:
    Retrieval extension spawns runaway rg workers after Yarn node_modules relink

If you catch it during a freeze, you can also grab a macOS sample of the problematic process Activity Monitor > select the process > gear icon > Sample Process and attach it. That helps a lot with diagnosis.

Let me know what Process Explorer shows and what happens with --disable-extensions.

6

@deanrie thanks for the quick response. My system has settled down and I am no longer experiencing this problem. I suspect it was originally due to the large number of historic conversations and this continued after re-installing due to indexing and the fact that my machine was still running ‘hot’. I do have some sample traces which I have uploaded in case they are any use.

sample1.txt (370.3 KB)
sample4.txt (306.9 KB)
sample3.txt (517.3 KB)
sample2.txt (380.0 KB)

This issue can be closed.