cursor.diffs.useCharacterLevelDiffs

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

What happened to “cursor.diffs.useCharacterLevelDiffs”? It’s marked as as an unknown configuration setting since Version: 2.0.60. Changes aren’t highlighted anymore on character level as a consequence.

Has this been moved somewhere else?

Steps to Reproduce

Update to Version: 2.0.60 (Universal).

Expected Behavior

Character level highlighting of diffs in the inline suggestions.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.60 (Universal)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

3

Thanks for the report, I’ll check with the team and get back to you on this!

4

Hi @Michael_Heimes,

Thanks for reporting this! I heard back from the team about the cursor.diffs.useCharacterLevelDiffs setting.

Unfortunately, the character-level diff feature was removed because it was generating inaccurate diffs too frequently, which was causing confusion for users. The team made the decision to remove it rather than keep a broken experience.

The good news is that the team is actively focused on improving the agent review flow overall. While there aren’t immediate plans to add character-level diffs back, they’re working on making the review experience smoother and more reliable.

We’d love your feedback: What specific aspects of reviewing agent changes are most important to your workflow? Your input on what would make the review process better would be really valuable to the team as they work on improvements.

Let us know your thoughts!

5

Character level diffs were really useful for me fwiw! It’s now hard to know the agent has changed and I have been using the working tree diff view to see what changed, but this is much worse than how it was before.

I can see how this character level diff isn’t that important for really large changes, but when I’m asking Cursor to, for example, change the padding on something, it’s so much easier when I can instantly see the couple numbers that it changed.

Lmk if you want more details on how I find it useful. I suspect this won’t happen, but if possible to bring the setting back, I would really appreciate it.

6

Just wanted to add that this feature was very critical for my user experience. I often used cursor for text editing and it’s now very difficult to see any changes that were made in a text paragraph in latex – for example – because the paragraph is on a single line (and I wouldn’t want to switch to having to write each sentence on a new line).

Please bring this feature back again!

7

Thanks for the feedback, I’ve passed it on to the team.

8

That was the most useful feature for AI agents. It takes 3-4 times more to check what an agent changed without the character level diffs. Especially if there are only few characters changed in json file.

Please bring this feature back!

9

Thank you! Please bring it back, it was making it much easier to see what had been edited.

In the Editor I never had an issue with it showing the wrong result, I am assuming it is an issue with the Agent. If there’s a way to bring it back in Editor mode it would be amazing!

10

Any update on this issue?

11

Now Cursor is useless.

12

This is a core feature I can’t live without. Please bring it back. Even though it was buggy at times (maybe <1% from my experience), the time savings were enormous. I feel like my hands are tied now, and I have to read so much text to compare every character, which is very exhausting. I know people who pay for Cursor solely for this feature, because they say it gives them much better control of the code compared to Cloud Code and other tools, which they say are overall much better. I’m downgrading Cursor and hope you will fix it in the meantime, or I’ll have to figure out something else.

P.S. @sanjeed5 , as far as I remember, this feature was never enabled by default, so the people in this thread who say Cursor is useless without it all enabled it manually, spending time going through all the Cursor options and toggling them on and off. Now see how strongly we are defending it, and some even say Cursor is useless without it. The point is that if you fix the feature and enable it for everyone, it could be a game changer for the average Cursor user who did not even know it existed.

13

bring it back (as an option)

14

This is a code editor’s core feature specially helpful in refactorings and when reviewing agent’s changes. This has to be back in the next release.

Its makes it very hard to verify the agent changes over multiple files of existing codebase if it has made some character level change.

Please try to add this in your next update!! Thanks!

15

There are more comments and likes than votes. Guys, please click the vote button to push it over.

16

Bring it back please! It’s a core feature of an AI-based editor.

19

This is absolutely ridiculous; the inter-line diff is a problem solved at least 10 years ago. Not seeing this feature in a modern IDE is just crazy. Instead of building an IDE of the future, you’ve invented a time machine to 2002.

Editing any serious technical documents is so awfully painful – the agent could’ve added a comma to a very long line of text, and now you need to manually re-read and compare word-by-word two long lines of text. And I thought that the idea of AI was to improve developers’ performance!
I’m out of words to describe my frustration.

21

Bring it back, make this a optional feature.

22

What specific aspects of reviewing agent changes are most important to your workflow?

Literally character level diffs, because LLMs hallucinate, add a lot of fluff, make unasked changes and only character level diffs can catch that - nothing else. We are talking about code which is a precise thing. Even if it were a poem, it would still be important. But with code… just multiply it. One of the main reason why I’m slowly moving away from Cursor - just because of that, sadly.

23

This is a critical feature, it should be reintroduced.

24

I have a disability where this feature would help mitigate the things that hold me back! I am incredibly angry at this removal, and furthermore they ignored my email to them I sent last year!
It never bugged out on me, and I wonder how people were struggling so much that they’d remove it?? At least return it as an experimental feature that I can enable and accept the risks!! And since you IGNORED my email, here it is for everyone to see:

Sent: 08 November 2025 11:15
Subject: Critical Accessibility Issue - Request for Reasonable Accommodation: Character-Level Diff Feature Removal

Dear Cursor Support Team,

I am writing as a paying customer to raise a critical accessibility issue that significantly impacts my ability to use Cursor IDE effectively.

I am requesting a reasonable accommodation for accessibility needs. I am autistic, dyslexic, and diabetic, with vision difficulties. The character-level diff highlighting feature in Cursor IDE is essential for my work, and its removal has created a significant barrier.

I discovered this feature was removed only after asking Cursor’s AI assistant to help locate the setting. The setting appears to have been deprecated in version 2.0.60 without prior notice or explanation. I had to investigate to understand why a feature I rely on daily was no longer available.

Character level diff highlighting is essential for my work…

With autism and dyslexia, I process visual information differently. Character-level highlighting makes precise changes immediately visible.

My diabetic condition affects my vision. Character level highlighting provides the contrast needed to see small changes, especially in large files like README.md where a single character change can be hard to see.

Without it, I have to copy and paste code blocks and text paragraphs to external diff checker websites to see changes properly. This slows me down when reviewing the agent generated changes.

As a developer, I need to review code changes accurately and efficiently. The lack of character-level highlighting puts me at a significant disadvantage and increases the risk of missing important changes.

When working with documentation files (such as README.md files) or code where only minor changes have been made, the character-level diff feature allows me to immediately see what has changed. Without it, I struggle to identify differences in large blocks of text, forcing me to use external tools and significantly reducing my productivity.

I would appreciate an explanation for:

Why this feature was removed

Whether there are plans to restore it or provide an alternative

What accessibility considerations were made before its removal

Whether there are any workarounds or settings I can use in the meantime

I am requesting that you:

Restore the character-level diff highlighting feature, or

Provide an equivalent alternative that meets the same accessibility needs, or

Provide a clear timeline for when this functionality will be restored

This feature is not just a convenience, it’s a necessary accessibility tool that enables me to work effectively. Its removal has created a significant barrier that impacts my professional capabilities and productivity.

I understand that software development involves difficult decisions, but accessibility features should not be removed without careful consideration of their impact on users with disabilities. As a paying customer who chose Cursor specifically because it enabled me to program effectively, I am deeply concerned about this change.

I would appreciate a prompt response addressing my concerns and outlining the steps Cursor will take to resolve this issue.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Damian Williams