Cursor CLI agent - Input Window black background with black text

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1

I have the following problem with the Cursor CLI in bash.
After installing Cursor CLI it worked normal, but since yesterday I have the following problem: After starting the agent, the prompt window has black background with black font:

Screenshot 2026-04-15 at 11.31.09
Screenshot 2026-04-15 at 11.31.09819×268 7.66 KB

I tried to use zsh resulting in the same problem. In addition I tried to delete the cursor installation:

rm -rf ~/.local/bin/cursor-agent
rm -rf ~/.cursor
rm -rf ~/.config/Cursor

and reinstall, with the same result. Black in black.

Is there a way to configure the appearance of the CLI agent prompt?

Thanks for any help.

4

Same issue. Light theme is broken for me too. Dark theme works.

5

Hey there!

Yes, we recently changed the prompt bar styling, and there might be some kinks to work out.

The CLI tries to auto-detect your terminal background color using OSC 11, and when that fails, it defaults to a dark theme, which causes the black-on-black issue on light terminals.

You can verify whether your terminal supports OSC 11 by running:

printf '\e]11;?\a'

As a workaround, try adding this to your shell profile (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):

export TERM_THEME=light

Then restart your shell and launch the CLI again.

Could you let me know:

  1. Does the printf command above produce any output?
  2. The full output of agent about (minus your email)?

That’ll help us figure out what’s going on.

7

Thanks for the quick response and help.

printf do not produce any output.

Adding the theme to the shell profile helps. The background is now light grey.

Here is the full output about the agent:

About Cursor CLI

CLI Version         2026.04.14-ee4b43a
Model               Composer 2 Fast
Subscription Tier   Enterprise
OS                  linux (x64)
Terminal            unknown
Shell               bash

Note: The agent is used within the terminal of RStudioPro

8

Thank you for the quick reply! And that line is a good quick fix and it is only a quick fix: If the desktop environment switches from light to dark mode, my terminal theme switches, but then I have to reset every agent, start it again with a different environment.
Sometimes the sun shines in my face and I need a light background, sometimes I code at night, manual adjustment is not a permanent solution here.
It would be amazing if we could find a runtime solution that avoids restarting all agents multiple times a day.
Thank you! :slight_smile:

PS: OSC11 is not supported by the shell in the remote development server.

11

Sorry for the late reply! This isn’t working well on terminals that don’t support OSC 11. When the background color probe fails, we default to a dark theme, which is what causes the black-on-black issue on light terminals.

We’ve shipped a few fixes recently that improve theme detection (soon including automatic re-probing during sessions for terminals that do support it), but for terminals where OSC 11 isn’t available at all… no luck. I’ve flagged this for the team.

In the meantime, export TERM_THEME=light in your shell profile is the best workaround.