Hey, this is a classic Electron issue on Linux with Wayland. The UI doesn’t render and the window stays gray. I get how annoying it is to hit this right after an update. Since --disable-gpu and reinstalling didn’t help, we’ll need to dig a bit deeper.
Please send:
Display server and DE: Wayland or Xorg? Which desktop environment (GNOME / KDE / Hyprland / other) and version? If it’s GNOME 46+, X11 is already removed, so that’s an important detail.
GPU: which graphics card do you have? Output of lspci | grep -i vga.
Launch log from terminal:
cursor --verbose --enable-logging=stderr 2>&1 | tee cursor.log
Share the contents of cursor.log. It usually shows where rendering fails.
Also try launching with these ozone flags one at a time, not together:
If nothing helps, you can temporarily roll back to the previous version. Older .deb files are available at Cursor · Download. Install over the current one with sudo dpkg -i cursor_<version>_amd64.deb to confirm whether this is a regression in 3.3.30 or something in the environment changed.
Let me know what the log shows and we’ll go from there.
I use Mint Cinnamon, Display server x11 (see screenshot) and info.txt
see vga.txt
3. see cursor_log.txt
regarding the commands:
cursor --ozone-platform-hint=x11: it does start with message “Warning: ‘ozone-platform-hint’ is not in the list of known options, but still passed to Electron/Chromium.” which I guess is the ok
cursor --ozone-platform=wayland --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform: nothing happens, not even the gray windows
cursor --disable-gpu-sandbox: it does start, but I guess disabling the gpu will impact performances
So what shall I do for regular usage? Is the first command ok? will it have side-effects?
still when I try to create a new agent with the plus button in the chat side panel I get the error
“t.startsWith is not a function”, see screenshot
--ozone-platform-hint=x11: the warning not in the list of known options is safe. Electron still reads the flag. On X11 it is basically a no-op, so you should not expect a real effect.
--disable-gpu-sandbox: this is a recommended workaround for NVIDIA on Linux. Important, it does not disable GPU acceleration. It only disables the sandbox for the GPU process. This is a long known incompatibility between the proprietary NVIDIA driver and Electron sandboxing. For the editor, the performance impact is tiny, so feel free to keep it.
Or create your own copy in ~/.local/share/applications/cursor.desktop so an update does not overwrite it.
On t.startsWith is not a function
This is a known bug with the panel when creating a new agent chat. It is tracked internally. There is no ETA yet. Workaround, try creating the chat from the Command Palette using Ctrl+Shift+P then New Chat or New Agent Chat instead of the plus button.
About the log
Your cursor_log.txt has unusual errors during workbench startup like illegalState setting UNKNOWN service instance and a crash in setAuxiliaryBarHidden. This looks like why the UI does not render without --disable-gpu-sandbox. To rule out local state issues:
Close Cursor
Back up and temporarily rename ~/.config/Cursor and ~/.cursor:
Launch Cursor fresh with no flags, log in again, and check if it starts.
If it starts on a clean profile without --disable-gpu-sandbox, then it is a state issue. If it still fails, it is likely a regression in 3.3.30 on your setup, and we can investigate further. Let me know what you find.
Previously, while it was “working”, I could’nt open new agent tabs on the docked agent on right side, only on new agents window (which I don’t like, because ITS ON A SEPARATED WINDOW!).
already tried installing again. no good.
they are adding so many things to this IDE it’s become unusable.
It’s the latest version (3.3.30)
EDIT:
Renamed the \AppData\Roaming\Cursor folder to something else and restarted. Seems to be working again. Probably lost all configs.
Yes I can confirm.
Opening the “agent window” I can create a new agent. After the first reply from the agent, I can close the Agent window and going back on the main windows, side chat panel , searching in the “chat history” I can find the newly created chat and use it.
It’s a painful workaround and still I can use only one agent at a time and switching is long and annoying.
Since Dean says it is known I hope it’ll be fixed soon.
I had these exact bugs that were described here. The launch options did not do anything. Updating from 3.3.30 to 3.4.16 did not do anything either. The only thing that made Cursor load was to remove things in ~/.config/Cursor.
After placing folders and files back in from the backup, the problem was determined to be in state.vscdb within ~/.config/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage.
Hey, thanks for the lead, Joe, this is really helpful narrowing. The symptom matches a known pattern: a corrupted composer entry in state.vscdb (the workspace state DB) can break startup before the UI fully mounts.
For anyone who runs into this, here’s a more targeted and less destructive workaround:
Inside workspaceStorage there are subfolders named by workspace hash, and each has its own state.vscdb. To find the specific broken workspace, you can move half the folders out, launch Cursor, and use binary search to narrow it down to one folder. Then delete or rename only that one so you don’t lose global settings, extensions, or chats.
On Windows it’s the same idea in %APPDATA%\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage.
About t.startsWith is not a function when creating an agent via + in the side panel, that’s a separate bug and it’s already logged. For now, the workaround is to use the Command Palette Ctrl+Shift+P then New Chat, or use the Agent Window. When a fix ships, we’ll update the thread.
@Alberto_Cardellino re --disable-gpu-sandbox: feel free to keep it. It only disables the GPU sandbox, not GPU acceleration, so the performance impact should be minimal. It’s best to make it permanent via ~/.local/share/applications/cursor.desktop using a user copy so an update won’t overwrite it.
