Editors always opened in new editor groups

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Using Cursor 1.4.5 on macOS Sequoia 15.6, I notice that all of my Cursor-related editor tabs, or any non-Cursor editor tab opened at the time a Cursor editor is the active editor, always open in new editor groups. Some examples:

Example 1:
Active editor: Cursor Chat
Double-click myDoc.md in Explorer
Result: myDoc.md is opened in a new editor group (new column to the left of my active editor group)

Example 2:
Active editor: myDoc.md
Open Cursor > Settings… > Cursor Settings
Result: Cursor Settings is opened in a new editor group (same as above)

Example 3:
Active editor: myDoc.md
Double-click myDoc2.md in Explorer
Result: myDoc2.md is opened in the active editor group, to the right of myDoc.md

Example 4:
Active editor: myDoc.md
Open Cursor > Settings… > VSCode Settings
Result: VSCode Settings is opened in the active editor group, to the right of myDoc.md

Is this behavior configurable? I can’t find a configuration setting that would change it—particularly given that it seems to be context-specific to navigating to and away from Cursor editor windows.

Steps to Reproduce

See the steps above in the description. Basically (at least in my environment), opening Cursor editors, or opening any editors when a Cursor editor is active, is hard-wired to create a new editor group.

Expected Behavior

I would expect the default behavior to be reliant on the VSCode editor configuration. I.e. I have “multiple” configured for editor tabs, so I would assume new editors would open within the active editor group. And they do, whenever there’s not a Cursor-based editor driving different behavior.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.4.5 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: af58d92614edb1f72bdd756615d131bf8dfa5290
Date: 2025-08-13T02:08:56.371Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

When open new file, it always opens in the right column active editor group
2

Hey, thanks for the report - this isn’t one I have seen before!

Can you try these steps and see if anything helps here:

  • Check workspace-specific settings overriding editor group preferences.
  • Reset editor layout (View → Reset Editor Layout).
  • Ensure workbench.editor.openPositioning is set to “right” in VSCode settings.
3

Thanks for the follow-up!

Check workspace-specific settings overriding editor group preferences.

If you mean VSCode settings:

  • I checked <Workspace Root>/.vscode and there are no workspace-specific settings there.
  • For good measure, I went into my settings in ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/settings.json and deleted everything that wasn’t an editor.defaultFormatter value, since defaults are okay by me.

Reset editor layout (View → Reset Editor Layout).

I didn’t find that option, but I went to the Command Palette and tried View: Reset View Locations.

Ensure workbench.editor.openPositioning is set to “right” in VSCode settings.

Yep, this is where it’s set.

I’m happy to try any kind of “meta-reset” of the Cursor UX that doesn’t lose content or chat history, etc. I’m happy overall with the default UX settings. This just started happening to me one day—it wasn’t my original experience in Cursor—and so I’m not sure if I inadvertently hit some bad key sequence or inadvertently chose a configuration option when clicking through to somewhere else. Anything up to “blow your whole UX config away” that would change this would be alright by me. :slightly_smiling_face:

4
  • I tried uninstalling Cursor and re-installing, but that didn’t help.
  • I also tried on another of my macOS machines, and the behavior is there too, so it’s not fat-fingered configuration in a specific environment.
  • It also persists across projects, so it’s not project-specific configuration.
  • I tried uninstalling all of my extensions and restarting Cursor, but that didn’t help.
  • I double-checked all editor settings against VSCode—which doesn’t do this—and they’re all the same.

Is there anything I can do to further troubleshoot, or “start over”? I have to assume this isn’t default behavior, but I seem to be unable to exert any control over it, and it’s honestly wrecking my productivity in Cursor. Navigation to anywhere is slowed to a crawl, because I constantly have to reset the bad state that’s garnered from simply clicking to open another editor.

5

I think another important facet to point out is that this behavior does not happen if my chat window is displayed either as a pane, or as an editor in its own editor group—the latter being the default behavior when you select “Open as Editor” from the Chat’s context menu. In these layouts, the Chat window will happily open editors, Chat settings, etc., within my main editor group. It’s only when I make my Chat view an editor within the main editor group, that I see this aberrant behavior.

The reason I like to have all of my editors—including Chat—in one editor group is because I want as much real estate as possible within each editor. I don’t want a dedicated “side panel” taking space from my main editor windows. But I’m thinking of moving back to the “side panel” paradigm for the time being, because honestly the loss of space is not as disruptive as the constant opening of editors in a new editor group.

Anyway, wanted to share those further details, in case it helps narrow down the source of the UX anomaly.

6

This topic was automatically closed 22 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.