Cursor crashes constantly on every restart

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

constant Cursor crashing - on every restart.
I have two projects open in Cursor. i started getting intermittent crashing, and now it crashes on every single restart. I am trying to close tabs and archive agent prompts, but while previously i’ve been able to archive and kinda get over the situation - now i am unable to get rid of the crashing.
i’ve tried to close the second project, i’ve renamed the folder that the first project is in, and then opened cursor, but no change.

Steps to Reproduce

the only detail i can think of is that one of my prompts, while i was writing a followup prompt, i created a new tab to start a new prompt, but the things i had written (but not yet sent), to the previous prompt, were displayed there. this has been an ongoing situation where everytime there’s a crash, there’s an unprocessed draft.

Expected Behavior

some way of figuring out that cursor is crashing, and suggest to not open the projects but instaed boot up cursor in a safe way without opening the projects.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

cannot access this because cursor crashes every time.
but Finder in /Applications says it’s 2.2.20.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

Editor crash end of every request
2

Screenshot 2025-12-15 at 21.25.37
Screenshot 2025-12-15 at 21.25.371152×520 23.6 KB

when i try to start closing the projects, it tells me that Saving UI State is gonna take a while - if i let it stay a while, Cursor crashes. if i Close Anyway, Cursor crashes.

so i don’t know what i’m supposed to be doing, cos I simply cannot use Cursor right now on a quite timely project that i need to keep developing.

3 

$ ./Cursor 
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.279Z] Error: file:///Users/esaruoho/Library/Application Support/Cursor/Workspaces/1765826812433/workspace.json looks like an invalid workspace file.
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.288Z] [CursorProclistService] Native module loaded successfully
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.465Z] updateURL https://api2.cursor.sh/updates/api/update/darwin-arm64/cursor/2.2.20/5c26bcdf9092bf0c63dcd721978ac8fa0a63da6189f3223a5be1b4d95d3ce677/stable
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.466Z] update#setState idle
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.954Z] [Tray] getMacOSIconPath: hasNotifications: false
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.961Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Cannot set visibility: browser view not created for window 2
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:18.961Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Cannot execute JavaScript: browser view not created for window 2
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:19.046Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Setting up certificate verify proc for window 2
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:19.047Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Browser view created for window 2
(electron) 'webContents.canGoBack' is deprecated and will be removed. Please use 'webContents.navigationHistory.canGoBack' instead.
(electron) 'webContents.canGoForward' is deprecated and will be removed. Please use 'webContents.navigationHistory.canGoForward' instead.
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:19.226Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Navigating to http://localhost:8000/finances.html?profile=ESA_OS (window 2)
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:19.402Z] [BrowserViewMainService] Flushed session storage data for window 2
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:21.514Z] [CursorProclistService] Config enabled feature (subsample every 10s)
[main 2025-12-15T19:27:23.524Z] [CursorProclistService] Config enabled feature (subsample every 10s)

<--- Last few GCs --->

[45785:0x11400560000]     1127 ms: Scavenge 42.5 (57.5) -> 35.0 (62.3) MB, pooled: 0.0 MB, 1.92 / 0.04 ms (average mu = 0.996, current mu = 0.996) task; 
[45785:0x11400560000]    27565 ms: Scavenge 59.7 (74.5) -> 39.5 (44.0) MB, pooled: 23.0 MB, 1.88 / 0.00 ms (average mu = 0.996, current mu = 0.996) allocation failure; 

[45785:1215/212745.485808:ERROR:electron/shell/common/node_bindings.cc:179] OOM error in V8: Zone Allocation failed - process out of memory
[1215/212745.493385:WARNING:third_party/crashpad/crashpad/util/process/process_memory_mac.cc:94] mach_vm_read(0x16b464000, 0x8000): (os/kern) invalid address (1)
Trace/BPT trap: 5

hope this helps.

4

ok, seems like the solution was to delete the workspace that seemed to be considered invalid. cursor now opens. i’ll hopefully be able to sidestep this issue from now on.

1 Like
5

I found a solution to the crash issue that allows you to recover without deleting important data within Cursor.

The existing solution suggests the following command, but this results in losing all important Cursor data (extensions, settings, history, etc.):

cd ~/Library
cd "Application Support"
mv Cursor CursorBackup

My proposed method allows you to keep your existing environment and data intact. This serves as a good temporary fix until the official bug fix is released.

:warning: IMPORTANT: Warning

Please make sure to BACKUP the state.vscdb file before editing or deleting it.

If the file gets corrupted during editing, you will not be able to restore it.

Steps

Open the DB file

Use an SQLite editor (like “DB Browser for SQLite”) to open the following file:

~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage/[workspaceSessionId]/state.vscdb

(Locate the correct [workspaceSessionId] folder by checking the “Date Modified”.)

Edit JSON Data

Find the row where the key column is composer.composerData and edit its value column (JSON data).

Remove IDs

Check the “selectedComposerIds” and “lastFocusedComposerIds” arrays in the JSON. Remove the session IDs that seem to be causing the crash (or the ones active right before the crash).

(You can check the allComposers array to identify which IDs to keep.)

Example:

If id1 and id2 are the problematic sessions, remove them as shown below:

{
  "allComposers": [
    {
      ...
    }
  ],
  "selectedComposerIds": [
    // "id1",  <-- remove
    // "id2",  <-- remove
    "id3"
  ],
  "lastFocusedComposerIds": [
    // "id1",  <-- remove
    // "id2",  <-- remove
    "id3",
    "id4"
  ],
  "hasMigratedComposerData": true,
  "hasMigratedMultipleComposers": true
}

Notes

  • Data Safety: This method only modifies the “display state” (which tabs are open). The actual session data (chat history) is NOT deleted, so your data remains safe.
  • Caution: Once you successfully launch Cursor, do not try to open the problematic session from the history again, as it may cause Cursor to crash again.
Cursor Crashing with error code 5 - Dec 14