Cursor IDE Crashes on macOS 24.3.0 - Research and Potential Solutions

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UPDATE: Solution found

After trying several approaches, I’ve found a solution that completely eliminates the crashes. I’ve been using Cursor for hours without a single crash, whereas before I was experiencing 4-5 crashes per hour.

The Working Solution

The fix involves launching Cursor with specific command-line flags that address both the GPU compositing issues and memory management problems. Here’s how to implement it:

  1. Create a simple launch script file named “Launch Cursor.command” with these contents:
#!/bin/bash
open -a '/Applications/Cursor.app/Contents/MacOS/Cursor' --args --disable-gpu-compositing --js-flags="--max-old-space-size=4096"
  1. Make the script executable with this Terminal command:
chmod +x ~/Desktop/"Launch Cursor.command"
  1. From now on, always launch Cursor using this script instead of opening the application directly.

Why This Works

This solution addresses two key issues:

  1. The --disable-gpu-compositing flag specifically targets the problematic GPU compositing feature in Electron (the framework Cursor is built on) while keeping other hardware acceleration benefits. This is more targeted than completely disabling GPU acceleration.

  2. The --js-flags="--max-old-space-size=4096" parameter better manages JavaScript memory allocation, preventing the memory leaks that contribute to crashes.

You must use the script to launch Cursor every time - if you launch Cursor directly, the flags won’t be applied and you’ll likely experience crashes again.

I hope this helps others experiencing the same issue! This seems to be a specific compatibility problem between macOS 24.3.0 and the Electron framework that Cursor uses, which these flags successfully work around.