Cursor creates phantom unsaved changes on every restart (requires discarding multiple files)

I’d like to report a bug that I’ve been dealing with for about a month. I kept waiting for it to be fixed, but it doesn’t seem like anything is changing.

Bug description:
Every time I restart Cursor, it shows a list of files as “modified / needs saving”, even though I didn’t change anything.

What happens:

  • I work on a project
  • I make changes and commit
  • There are no unsaved files
  • I close Cursor
  • When I open Cursor again, I suddenly get ~10 files marked as changed/unsaved (changes I did not make)
  • This forces me to discard changes file-by-file and reset the project back to the last commit

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open Cursor
  2. Make any change
  3. Commit
  4. Close Cursor
  5. Open Cursor again
  6. Observe multiple files flagged as modified/unsaved even though no edits were made

This is happening consistently and makes it really hard to trust the working tree state after restart. Any help would be appreciated.

Version: 2.2.44 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 20adc1003928b0f1b99305dbaf845656ff81f5d0
Date: 2025-12-24T21:41:47.598Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

are these all your gitingore files?

1 Like

Thank you very much for wanting to help
Not at all, just regular files, something different every time.

ok i have the same thing going on then, when i reboot i have 172 files that i need to commit and push and the number grows. they tend to be a lot of .md files so i thought it maybe was gitignore and i was doing something wrong.

1 Like

Unfortunately it’s not, it’s a bug in the cursor, the problem is that their comment system is a bit difficult for people, and people prefer to wait for someone else to complain…

Yeah this is a real issue, and makes Cursor unusable:

@deanrie are we any closer to a fix?

2 Likes

I started to have a routine.
Don’t exit cursor before commit
Restart, reset to last commit, because I have no idea what he changed there for me

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue and the team is working on a fix.

The bug has been confirmed by multiple users. Files that Agent or Composer previously edited get marked as modified when the IDE starts, usually due to EOF or whitespace changes. Related reports:

For debugging, could you share:

  1. A Git diff for one of the flagged files (screenshot or text). Is it whitespace and newlines, or actual code changes?
  2. The value of git config core.autocrlf
  3. Are you using WSL or native Windows?
  4. Your list of installed extensions, especially formatters and linters
  5. Does it reproduce when you start Cursor with cursor --disable-extensions?

Temporary workarounds (from other users):

  • Open each flagged file → Accept all changes → close and reopen Cursor
  • Or reset to the last commit after startup

Let us know what you find. This will help the team speed up the fix.

2 Likes

This should be fixed in version 2.3.x.

2 Likes

Most of the time there was no real change.
But I got tired of checking.

Windows

I don’t install any plugins at all.

Glad to hear, and when is this version supposed to come out?

Hey, I know how frustrating this is.

Version 2.3.x is already rolling out. Updates are usually released in stages, so it can take 1 to 3 days to reach all users. Keep an eye on the update notification in Cursor, or check manually via Help > Check for Updates.

Let me know if the issue still happens after you update to 2.3.x.

1 Like

You can grab 2.3.x from here if you don’t want to wait for the rollout:

Now I installed the new version, same bug, nothing has been fixed.
@Colin @deanrie

Version: 2.3.29 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 4ca9b38c6c97d4243bf0c61e51426667cb964bd0
Date: 2026-01-08T00:34:49.798Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Hey Cursor team, this last update solved a lot of issues for me, great job and keep up the great work!