Cursor's built-in browser keeps invoking external browsers

Support Bug Reports
1

I found it straight up impossible to be browser invoked the inbuilt browser. It always only invokes external browser. It always only invokes an external browser even though I want it to open, read and inspect only its internal browser.

This has been a buggy issue for months now, will someone ever fix this?

2

Hi there!

We detected that this may be a bug report, so we’ve moved your post to the Bug Reports category.

To help us investigate and fix this faster, could you edit your original post to include the details from the template below?

Bug Report Template - Click to expand

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

  • Editor, Tab & Chat (autocomplete, Composer, in-editor agent)
  • Terminal & commands
  • Models, pricing & API keys (availability, Auto/Max, BYOK/Bedrock)
  • MCP & tools
  • Cloud Agents & Automations (cursor.com/agents, scheduled/event)
  • BugBot & Code Review
  • Cursor CLI
  • Cursor Mobile
  • Remote (SSH / Dev Containers / WSL)
  • Account, billing & login
  • Something else…

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Steps to Reproduce
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  1. …
  2. …
  3. …

Expected Behavior
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Operating System

  • Windows 10/11
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Version Information

  • For Cursor IDE: Menu → About Cursor → Copy
  • For Cursor CLI: Run agent about in your terminal
IDE:
Version: 2.xx.x
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: ......

CLI:
CLI Version 2026.01.17-d239e66

For AI issues: which model did you use?
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Request ID: f9a7046a-279b-47e5-ab48-6e8dc12daba1
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Additional Information
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Does this stop you from using Cursor?

  • Yes - Cursor is unusable
  • Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor
  • No - Cursor works, but with this issue

The more details you provide, the easier it is for us to reproduce and fix the issue. Thanks!

7

Hey @sk_monkeytyper, thanks for the report, and sorry this has been frustrating.

From our side, Cursor’s built-in browser is not being offered to the agent at all in your current sessions, so it falls back to whatever else can open a page. In your case, that looks like a separate Chrome / DevTools style MCP server you have configured, which is why an external browser opens no matter which model you use. This isn’t the model ignoring the built-in browser; it simply never has it available.

Could you try the following?

  1. Open Cursor Settings and go to the Browser & Network tab.
  2. Under Browser Automation, set the dropdown to “Browser Tab”. If it already says “Browser Tab”, switch it to “Off” and back to “Browser Tab” (this forces the browser tools to re-register).
  3. Run “Developer: Reload Window” from the command palette.
  4. Start a brand new chat, type @Browser in the prompt, and ask the agent to open a URL and describe the page.

Two more things that should help:

  • You are on Cursor 3.15.6, which is from early August. Newer releases include several changes that keep the built-in browser attached to the agent, so please update (Cursor menu > Check for Updates) and retry.
  • If you have a Chrome DevTools, Playwright, or similar browser MCP server enabled under Settings > MCP, try disabling it, or tell the agent explicitly to use Cursor’s built-in browser tools. When both are available, the agent can pick either one.

Please let us know what the Browser Automation dropdown showed before you changed it, and whether step 4 uses the built-in browser after updating. That will tell us which path you were hitting.

10

Thanks for the response, appreciate it. I tried even after disabling chrome devtools and still had no luck.
“This side chat has no browser driver. Chrome DevTools and the Cursor browser tools are not connected here.”