Cursor not playing notification sound when awaiting user input to confirm command

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When requesting an agent to do some work, if user input is required to execute a command, a notification sound is not playing. I have the “Completion Sound” setting toggle on in UI.

Steps to Reproduce

Have completion sound setting toggled on in UI, make a request to agent, agent does some work and then stops to wait for you to approve command.

Expected Behavior

I expected a sound or notification to alert me that I need to approve.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.6.31 (Universal)
VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1
Commit: 81fcf2931d7687b4ff3f3017858d0c6dee7e2a60
Date: 2026-05-31T17:46:29.630Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
xterm.js: 6.1.0-beta.220
OS: Darwin arm64 25.4.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

Hey, thanks for the detailed report!

Slightly good news/bad news: this is actually working as designed right now rather than a bug. Under the hood Cursor does have an “approval” ding, but it’s intentionally muted when Cursor is focused and you’re looking at that same chat (the assumption being you’ll see the approval prompt on screen). It fires when Cursor is in the background, or you’re in a different conversation. The “Completion Sound” toggle itself mainly covers when the agent fully finishes its turn.

So sitting on the same chat waiting to approve = silent by design, which appears to be exactly the gap you’re hitting.

Thanks for the reply. Perhaps in the future the toggle to control notification sound can be a dropdown with options instead of a binary on/off toggle, where you could say you want all notifications, only when unfocused, or none. I personally would prefer to always be notified. I may be too busy reading the code or looking at another monitor screen to always notice it’s waiting for my input. This has happened enough times for me to create this post about it.

yeah 100% - I always want to be notified so allow that to be an option, this is one of the most annoying “features” around this. A text in the mean time to let people know that’s why it’s “broken” would be super helpful too.

I also find even when not focused, the sound often fails to play too, which is difficult to debug. Maybe even if using a window but the agent chat is open it fails to notify too? Either way I’d describe it currently as a feature that rarely ever does the job.