Cursor IDE has become completely unusable after the latest update (v2.6.21). The following issues are observed:
Cursor always terminates with exit code 5, reason: crash. This behavior is not related to any specific AI model.
The crash is specifically triggered when entering a prompt — the application can be opened and remains stable until a prompt is typed.
Cursor consumes excessive RAM, causing degraded performance within the application itself. macOS and other applications remain unaffected.
Overall usability is degraded — the application feels sluggish and unresponsive.
The prompt cursor blinks erratically and sometimes appears to hang/freeze.
I would like to downgrade to version 2.6 (a previous stable release), but the download page only offers a downgrade to v2.5.
Prior to the last update, Cursor was working reasonably well.
Steps to Reproduce
Open Cursor IDE
Open a project or start a session
Begin typing a prompt in the prompt input field
Observe: application crashes with exit code 5, reason crash
Expected Behavior
Cursor should launch and remain stable without crashing.
Entering a prompt should not cause a crash — the prompt should be submitted and processed normally.
Cursor should manage memory efficiently and not consume all available RAM.
The UI should be responsive, with no hanging or erratic cursor blinking.
It should be possible to run two instances simultaneously, as before.
A downgrade path to v2.6.x (a previous stable build) should be available.
Thanks for the message, and sorry to hear about the Cursor app crashing. This issue sounds similar to the recent macOS code: 5 crash pattern some users have been hitting in 2.6.x.
As a first pass, could you please try these steps:
Upgrade to the latest Cursor version + Restart.
Launch Cursor with extensions disabled and see if the crash still happens: cursor --disable-extensions
Try launching with GPU disabled: cursor --disable-gpu
Check whether the project is inside an iCloud-synced folder like Desktop or Documents. If so, move it to a local path like that is not iCloud-synced and retry.
If it still reproduces, please send:
main.log from Command Pallette: Developer: Open Logs Folder. You can access it with Command+Shift+P on the Mac, then type in “Developer: Open Logs Folder”.
a screenshot of Developer: Open Process Explorer right before the crash
Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep an eye on the log files if this happens again. So far, everything runs smoothly. I investigated a bit and it seems like the issue was related to a specific chat.
At first it looked like the issue was related to the size of the chat, because starting a fresh, clean chat works perfectly without any issues, while the problematic chat (export size around 163 KB) repeatedly caused hangs and unresponsiveness (e.g., clicking Run).
However, it now seems that the problem was bound to this particular chat, rather than to chat size alone. It might be that one specific prompt in that chat caused the Agent to behave unhealthily (e.g., getting stuck in some internal loop or state), rather than a hard size limit.
I eventually had to delete the problematic chat entirely, because it was stuck in an endless “Thinking…” loop. The chat was grayed out, and it was not possible to stop the Agent, so deletion was the only option.
After deleting that specific chat, Cursor went back to normal behavior in other chats.
The following log entries were found :
Multiple repeated occurrences of the following error were found in the logs, suggesting a missing or inaccessible transcript file:
2026-03-25 08:05:23.108 [error] [FileAppendMainService] Failed to append to file: ~/.cursor/projects/project1/agent-transcripts/d514d61a-ef2c-4d79-bd3b-a805098dd0f9/d514d61a-ef2c-4d79-bd3b-a805098dd0f9.jsonl A system error occurred (ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '~/.cursor/projects/project1/agent-transcripts/d514d61a-ef2c-4d79-bd3b-a805098dd0f9/d514d61a-ef2c-4d79-bd3b-a805098dd0f9.jsonl')
When the application fully crashes, the following entry appears in the logs, confirming the exit code 5 and reason crashed:
