Disabled MCP Servers become enabled after each restart

[Reza_Rahmati (Reza)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Somewhere else…

Describe the Bug

When disabling mcp server and restarting the cursor they all become enabled.
Adding “enabled”: false" to the specific mcp tool also doesn’t work.

It seems other users has reported this but the conversation is closed with no conclusion and fix.

Steps to Reproduce

1- Go to MCP Servers
2- Disabled few MCPs
3- Restart Cursor
4- Go to MCP Servers

5- Observed: all MCP are enabled again

Expected Behavior

The ones disabled still be disabled

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.43
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 8e4da76ad196925accaa169efcae28c45454cce0
Date: 2025-10-30T18:49:27.589Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.0.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. This looks like a config persistence issue with MCP server enable/disable states.

The enable/disable state is stored in Cursor’s state.vscdb at ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb, and it doesn’t seem to persist correctly across restarts.

Could you please share:

• Which MCP servers you’re trying to disable (names)
• Whether this happens with all MCP servers or only specific ones
• Whether you’re opening the same workspace or different ones

Let me know if you notice any patterns!

[Reza_Rahmati (Reza)]

Thanks for reply.

It happens on all MCP Servers, not a specific one, however I am using Atalsian, Contentful, BigQuery, N8N (happens on all)
Also happens regardless of workspace and project, even when no projects if you go to MCP tools all are enabled.

I noticed it as Atlasian opens a page for authentication, and it keep coming up

[deanrie]

Thanks for the details! I need to clarify one thing about how MCP server enable/disable states work:

The disabled/enabled state is stored per workspace in the database, not globally. When you open an empty Cursor window (no project), all MCP servers default to enabled. This is expected behavior.

Could you test this:

1. Open a specific workspace/project
2. Disable your MCP servers
3. Close Cursor completely
4. Reopen that same workspace/project
5. Check if the disabled state persisted

If the servers are still re‑enabling when you reopen the same workspace, then it’s a bug we need to fix. If they only show as enabled in empty windows or different projects, that’s the current design.

Let me know what you find!

[Reza_Rahmati (Reza)]

Using the flow you mentioned it keep the disabled status, however as soon as I open the cursor before opening the project it navigates to atlassina to authorize as it starts with “enabled“ state.

I assume if the IDE was starting with MCPs “disabled“, then based on the workspace they become enabled this issue will be some how resolved.

Also there are some issues with this behaviour, for example BQ MCP is listening on port 5000, and if opening two cursors then because first one regardless of the project or workspace is using the port , the second one which actually needs this MCP is not working.

[deanrie]

Thanks for the detailed testing! The observed behavior is working as designed - MCP server states are workspace-specific rather than global.

However, I understand the pain points this creates:

• Authentication spam: Atlassian MCP triggers sign-in prompts on startup before a workspace is opened
• Port conflicts: multiple Cursor instances competing for the same port

These are real UX issues that should be improved. We’ll consider this.

[Luis_Chen]

This is very annoying, every time i open a workspace project, it pop up a lot of these tabs!!!

[Reza_Rahmati (Reza)]

Yes, and not sure why it keep growing, intially it was only one tab, and then keep growing, right now it opens 4 tabs for me.

[Reza_Rahmati (Reza)]

For Atlassian I changed the mcp server to this, and then it only authenticated once not each time

“Atlassian-MCP-Server”: {
“url”: “``https://mcp.atlassian.com/v1/sse”
}