Cursor's cold startup time feels significantly slower

[Ibrahim_Kaya]

Feature request for product/service

Cursor IDE

Describe the request

Cursor’s cold startup time feels significantly slower compared to lightweight editors like Zed. Even on a modern machine, opening Cursor and reaching a fully usable state (UI responsive, extensions ready, terminals usable) takes noticeably longer than Zed.
Expected behavior

• Near-instant cold start comparable to Zed
• Faster time-to-interactive after launch
• Reduced background initialization blocking the UI
  Why this matters
  Developers switch between projects and restart the IDE frequently. Slow startup breaks flow and makes Cursor feel heavy compared to faster alternatives.
  Environment
• OS: Windows 11
• Cursor version: [Help → About’tan ekle]
  Related existing discussions
• Severe Performance Issues on Windows – Slow Launch, Repository Loading Delays, and UI Freezing
• Cursor Taking time to full boot

Operating System (if it applies)

Windows 10/11

[mohitjain (Mohit)]

Hey @Ibrahim_Kaya,

You shouldn’t be waiting that long, and it isn’t something you’ve misconfigured. Cold startup on Windows is an issue we’re tracking, and the team is looking at it. No timeline to share yet, but I’ll post here when there’s an update.

In the meantime on Windows:

1. Update if you’re behind (Help → About)
2. Add node_modules / build dirs to files.watcherExclude and search.exclude
3. Avoid MCP servers started with npx -y (install globally instead)
4. Launch once with --disable-extensions to check if an extension is the cost

After a cold start, run Developer: Startup Performance from the Command Palette and paste the breakdown + your version here. That’ll tell us if you’re hitting the general Windows slowness or something specific to your setup.