Dev Container Takes Over 10 Minutes to Start in Cursor (macOS) – Hangs on docker exec, Works in VS Code

Bug Reports
1

Describe the Bug

Starting with Cursor version 1.1.x, I’ve experienced extremely slow or stalled dev container startups on macOS. The issue began on the development branch, and after reverting to the regular branch, things briefly worked but as of updates to v1.2 and v1.2.1, the issue is now persistent.

The same container setup works flawlessly in VS Code, so the issue appears to be isolated to Cursor.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Cursor on macOS.
  2. Open a project using the following devcontainer.json:
{
  "name": "Node.js & TypeScript",
  "image": "mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/typescript-node:22-bookworm"
}
  1. Run the dev container.
  2. Container startup takes 5+ minutes or freezes entirely.

Expected Behavior

Dev container should start and attach in under a minute (as it does in VS Code).

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.2.1
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 031e7e0ff1e2eda9c1a0f5df67d44053b059c5d0
Date: 2025-07-03T06:06:37.704Z
Electron: 34.5.1
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.0
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.5.0

Additional Information

Troubleshooting Done:
• Switched between development and regular branches
• Reinstalled Cursor (including settings cleanup)
• Reinstalled and downgraded Anysphere’s dev container extension
• Deleted all Docker containers, images, and volumes
• Confirmed dev container works fine in VS Code

Startup hangs at this point in the log:

2025-07-03 11:07:37.854 [info] Spawned process 34809: 'docker' 'exec' '-u' 'root' '6c604ad82ce301a0f4865995d90392a23aa983323b87c53002c8a263a51c21be' 'bash' '-c' 'echo ... | (base64 -d 2>/dev/null || base64 -D) | bash'

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

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