Dev Containers not connecting to Orbstack/Docker

Bug Reports
1

Describe the Bug

When using docker instances via Orbstack or any non-Docker Desktop apps, Cursor’s Anysphere Dev Container extension is unable to connect to them.

This used to work perfectly fine until yesterday, when after updating to the latest version of cursor, i got a pop-up to use Anysphere’s dev containers and I clicked - yes, after that, I am unable run dev containers on cursor at all.

Steps to Reproduce

Use the latest version of Cursor, use podman/Orbstack and try to run repos with dev container settings.

Expected Behavior

It must work the same way, with same settings that VS Code dev containers run on. VS Code default dev container setup works flowlessly with any docker client

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 24.0.0

Additional Information

Here is the error log that Cursor shows -

Failed to connect to the remote extension host server (Error: Invalid DevContainerDestination JSON: {“hostPath”:“/Users//Desktop/”,“localDocker”:false,“settings”:{“context”:“orbstack”},“configFile”:{“$mid”:1,“fsPath”:“/Users//Desktop//.devcontainer/devcontainer.json”,“external”:“file:///Users//Desktop//.devcontainer/devcontainer.json”,“path”:“/Users//Desktop//.devcontainer/devcontainer.json”,“scheme”:“file”}})

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

3

I have the same problem

5

I faced the same issue after updating the Anysphere Dev Container extension. I deleted everything inside the C:\Users\USERNAME.cursor\extensions folder and reopened my project locally. Then, I reinstalled the extensions. Finally, I used the “Reopen in Container” option to rebuild the containers, and that fixed the problem.