We’ve recently made some changes to the in-app extension library, to now use OpenVSX as the underlying library.
Alongside this change, we have also started to publish and maintain our own versions of many popular extensions to ensure their continued compatibility with Cursor! These are shown as published by ‘Anysphere’, and are mostly drop-in replacements for core extensions you may have used previously.
While the vast majority of popular extensions are available here, some may be missing. If you find an extension missing, the best thing to do is to request that the developer/maintainer of the extension publish it to OpenVSX library.
Alternatively, you can still manually install local copies of extensions (with the .vsix file extension) simply by dragging them into the extensions pane inside Cursor.
Finally, in v1.1.3 and above, Cursor now lets you switch the marketplace backend you want to use, though please note that switching the marketplace is not officially supported.
Thanks for the update and for keeping us informed about the transition to OpenVSX
I was wondering if there are any plans to update Cursor to a more recent general VSCode version soon. It’s been a while since the last major update, and many popular extensions now depend on newer VSCode releases. Any timeline or update on this would be much appreciated!
Is there a plan to publish Anysphere’s alternative extension (python, cpp, dev containers) to the official VSCode library?
Right now OpenVSX is terrible. With many extensions missing and with extensions like Microsoft MSSQL being 5 years old it’s barely usable and definitely unreliable for us.
To have kind of working environment, we have to install some of the Anysphere’s extensions, then switch the backend to the VSCode library and install the rest of the extensions from there. But by doing so we lose the Anysphere’s extensions updates so we have to repeat the library switching procedure each time we want to check for updates or install extensions in dev container or remote host.
I know that VSCode library is not officially supported, and Cursor can’t be shipped with that backend configured by default. But is there anything that prevents Anysphere to publish their extension on VSCode marketplace? Does Microsoft block that as well?
For anyone frustrated by this, you can download .vsix files from this site: VSIX Downloader (source).
You just have to rename from .VSIXPackage to .vsix and you can use CTRL-SHIFT-P, then find Extensions: Install from VSIX... and you can install manually.
Auto Updating probably won’t work, but it’s a decent workaround, if you’re struggling with finding anything usable in OpenVSX.
Some of openVSX extensions already have warning signs, but at the moment it isn’t shown anywhere inside the cursor app and users could only see those upon opening the extension marketplace webpage (which, being honest, not many of us do when adding a new extension)
Is it correct I cannot find the regular vs code devcontainer extension anymore? The one provided from Anysphere is not as complete (does not allow cloning into container and such).
