Dev containers - Exiting cursor or switching dev container doesn't stop the running container

Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When developing with dev containers, exiting cursor or switching dev container doesn’t stop the running container. The docker container keeps running even though it is no longer needed.

This is an issue when working with multiple containers, all the running containers take up uneccesary system resources.
This can also sometimes cause container issues when multiple tools use the same container and expect a clean container startup.
I now have to manually stop the container every time I switch containers or have to run external tooling.

I also noticed that (windows) docker desktop (and thus the docker engine) does not automatically start anymore when opening a project that uses dev containers. It always used to do this.

Perhaps this could be related?
If not I will create a new bug report for this.

Steps to Reproduce

  • Connect to WSL2
  • Reopen in dev container
  • Quit cursor
  • (Docker) dev container stays up

Expected Behavior

  • Connect to WSL2
  • Reopen in dev container
  • Quit cursor
  • (Docker) dev container stops running

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.1.39 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 60d42bed27e5775c43ec0428d8c653c49e58e260
Date: 2025-11-27T02:30:49.286Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

4

Thanks for the report! A few quick questions:

  1. What version of the Anysphere Remote Containers extension do you have? Can you check if this happens on the latest?
  2. Is your devcontainer.json image/Dockerfile-based or Docker Compose-based?
  3. Does adding "shutdownAction": "stopContainer" explicitly to your devcontainer.json change the behavior?

Let us know what you find!

5
  1. I am using v1.0.28
  2. Most of my containers are docker-compose based. I reference/build a dockerfile in the docker-compose file.
  3. “shutdownAction”: “stopContainer” in devcontainer.json does nothing. The container stays active after closing cursor.