Editor freezes, app not responsive when editing a file

[plf (Paul Ferguson)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

IDE freezes up when making any edit to a file

Steps to Reproduce

Latest version: 2.2.20

Open from folder browser, UI works.
Make any edit to file, it freezes. Eventually a “This window is not responding” alert pops.
When selecting “Reopen”, it closes, restarts and reopens is a frozen state.
When selecting “Don’t restore editor” and “Reopen”, it works until making an edit again.

• Restarted Cursor and the machine, no change

Expected Behavior

Not to freeze when editing a file

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.2.20
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: b3573281c4775bfc6bba466bf6563d3d498d1070
Date: 2025-12-12T06:29:26.017Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.2.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. Editor freezing during editing in version 2.2.20 on macOS is a known issue tied to one specific setting.

Cause: If you have this in your settings.json:

"workbench.editor.showTabs": "single"

It directly causes freezing during any AI file editing.

Fix:

1. Open Cmd+, (Settings)
2. Search: workbench.editor.showTabs
3. Change from ”single" to ”multiple" (or delete the line)
4. Reload

This should fix it completely. If it still freezes:

• Clear chat history: ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/workspaceStorage
• Disable hardware acceleration: Cmd+Shift+P > “Preferences: Configure Runtime Arguments” > ”disable-hardware-acceleration": true

The team knows about the single tab mode issue and is working on a fix.

[plf (Paul Ferguson)]

Solution worked.
That was indeed a setting I had configured. Reverted to the default “multiple“ and no longer freezing.

Thanks for the quick response

[Samal_Rasmussen (Sámal Rasmussen)]

Thank you very much. I’ve been frustraded with this freeze for a few weeks now. Tried reinstalling a couple of days ago and it worked until this morning when it started freezing again. This fix seems to work.

BUT I really don’t like having visible tabs on top of the editor. I use the “Open editors” section in the sidebar instead. This pretty much works as vertical tabs.

[Eddy]

Had the same issue (excessive GPU use) now popup on Windows with the latest stable release, disabling acceleration helped, though had also to disable the terminal one (when using codex extension only)