Expose customization settings for inline Markdown Preview

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

Cursor IDE

Describe the request

Summary

Cursor has two built-in Markdown preview modes, but only the classic side preview appears to have supported customization settings.

The inline Preview | Markdown mode does not respect markdown.preview.* or markdown.styles. The setting names and docs also make it hard to tell which preview mode is being configured.

Current Behavior

Cursor appears to have two separate Markdown preview paths:

  1. Classic side preview

    • Opened with Markdown: Open Preview / Markdown: Open Preview to the Side.
    • Uses the VS Code Markdown preview webview.
    • Respects settings such as:
      • markdown.styles
      • markdown.preview.fontSize
      • markdown.preview.fontFamily
      • other markdown.preview.* settings

  2. Inline Preview mode

    • Shown as the Preview | Markdown toggle inside a normal .md editor tab.
    • Appears to use Cursor’s separate inline renderer.
    • Does not appear to respect markdown.styles or markdown.preview.*.

Problem 1: Inline Preview Has No Supported Customization Surface

The inline Preview mode is useful because it keeps Markdown reading/editing in the normal editor flow. But it currently lacks the customization hooks available in the side preview.

For example, this works in the side preview:

{
  "markdown.styles": [
    "/Users/<user>/path/to/markdown-preview.css"
  ],
  "markdown.preview.fontSize": 30
}

But the same settings do not affect inline Preview mode.

At minimum, this makes it hard to adjust readability. More broadly, there is no supported way to tune font size, font family, content width, heading size, paragraph spacing, code block styling, etc. for the inline Markdown renderer.

Problem 2: The Settings Are Ambiguous

The setting names imply they affect “Markdown preview” generally:

  • markdown.preview.fontSize
  • markdown.preview.fontFamily
  • markdown.styles

But forum staff replies indicate these apply to the side preview only, not inline Preview.

That distinction is not obvious from the settings UI. If a user opens a Markdown file, clicks Preview, changes markdown.preview.fontSize, and sees no effect, it feels like the setting is broken even if it is technically applying to a different preview renderer.

Problem 3: The Docs Are Hard To Discover Or Missing

I searched the official Cursor docs for:

  • markdown.preview
  • markdown.styles
  • Open Preview to the Side
  • Preview | Markdown

I did not find an official docs page that clearly explains:

  • Cursor has two built-in Markdown preview modes.
  • The side preview and inline Preview use different renderers.
  • markdown.preview.* / markdown.styles apply to the side preview only.
  • Inline Preview currently has no equivalent supported settings.

If this documentation exists, it should be easier to discover from settings/help search. If it does not exist, adding it would prevent a lot of confusion.

Reproduction

  1. Add settings like:
 {
   "markdown.styles": [
     "/Users/<user>/path/to/markdown-preview.css"
   ],
   "markdown.preview.fontSize": 30
 }
  1. Put obvious diagnostic CSS in the stylesheet.
  2. Open a Markdown file with Markdown: Open Preview to the Side.
  3. Observe that the side preview respects the style/font settings.
  4. Open the same file in inline Preview | Markdown mode.
  5. Observe that inline Preview ignores those settings.

Technical Observation

DevTools shows the classic side preview is a vscode.markdown-language-features webview iframe.

Inline Preview appears to be normal workbench DOM using Cursor-specific classes such as:

  • .markdown-editor-react
  • .markdown-editor-react__richtext-content

Temporary DevTools CSS injection targeting those classes works, so the inline renderer can be styled if CSS reaches the workbench DOM. There just does not appear to be a supported user setting for doing this persistently.

Proposed Solutions

Any of these would help:

  1. Make inline Preview respect existing settings
  • markdown.preview.fontSize
  • markdown.preview.fontFamily
  • markdown.preview.lineHeight
  • markdown.styles
  1. Add Cursor-specific inline Preview settings
  • For example:
    • cursor.markdownPreview.inline.fontSize
    • cursor.markdownPreview.inline.fontFamily
    • cursor.markdownPreview.inline.lineHeight
    • cursor.markdownPreview.inline.styles
  1. Clarify the settings UI
  • Rename or describe existing settings so users can tell they apply only to the side preview.
  • For example: “Markdown Preview: Font Size (side preview only)”.
  1. Clarify the docs
  • Add a docs section explaining the two built-in Markdown preview modes.
  • Explicitly state which settings apply to which renderer.
  • Mention whether inline Preview customization is unsupported, planned, or intentionally omitted.

Related Threads

Operating System (if it applies)

MacOS

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