Floating composer was what sold me on Cursor when a friend demo’d it to me - it’s the first time I’ve been able to get into a real flow using AI generation. Now that it’s gone it feels pretty clunky, like the AI features are just a plugin in Vscode rather than a full baked experience I can go into.
I really miss cmd + shift + i … the dx, getting into a flow with it and also that feeling that the AI was just a little detached from my hand-coding helped me trust it a whole lot more. I’ve tried popping out into a new window but it’s not the same as having a dedicated shortcut to pop it out and view the composer window each time.
A bit of a wake up call too about how much I’m coming to really depend on and enjoy cursor, and how quickly features I love can be taken away.
I am honestly so disappointed with this, the floating composer expedited my work flow immensely. This is as the main feature that kept me paying 20$ a month, and I’ve tried to make it work with the sidebar, but it is just too clunky and time consuming. I loved how easy it was to pop to a new file window, reset the floating composer(apparently that button is gone now too) and then work on that file. Now it is just way to clunky. I’m struggling to understand how they think the solution they have for us is, ‘you can use it in the sidebar’. I’ll be cancelling my subrscription for now and trying a competitor.
For those wanting to bring the composer window back while cursor (hopefully) reverse their decision , How to download a specific version of Cursor IDE · Issue #1143 · getcursor/cursor · GitHub has instructions for installing 0.42.5 which has that functionality. Back to flowing with the ai … especially great for laptop users out there (I’ve been on my laptop for the last 2 days away from my screens at home and 0.43.5 was unusable with the amount of screen space that I had).
I am in the minority, as usual, but I found the overlay window awkward. You could see green and red colors changing in the background while merging. It felt like an afterthought and overlay.
While focused in the old Composer window, code was being changed and removed in the background and you could not keep track of it. You need to watch your code very closely. This AI stuff is wacky sometimes.
What bothered me most about it is was it was never clear to me whether to use composer vs chat and now there is a new layer called an agent.
Concerning change. The floating window is objectively better in that it can be centered on the screen and take less space, minimizing eye movement drastically. The floating aspect and shortcuts to move it around is what made it more than a chat panel. The composer was effectively entirely removed from cursor for no particular reason, and replaced with a duplicated chat panel component that has a different name.
I will be downgrading as well and staying on 42.5 until this regression in eye movement is fixed. The entire reason to use Composer was that it is a tailored handmade experience appropriate for AI editing. It precisely wasn’t a chat window. This is actually wildly concerning. The team has deleted objective unique value from the product for no particular reason.
same here please bring back the floating popup was much better that the new one i find myself not use it as much because it taking abig chunk of the screen i am downgrading just to keep it
we appreciate the work that you have put in cursor but the new way is so frustrating its driving me nuts the user experience is so bad floating was perfect, i would really love it if you bring it back if not permanently at least an option.
Agreed with all of the above. I may not be using the side panel view correctly but finding it much harder to view diffs. I know it can show the diff in line but I much preferred the side by side diff view where you could see the original code and the new code in it’s entirety. Is there any way of doing this in the new view?
Just created a forum account to say +1 for bringing back the full screen Composer. I loved it because the best thing about Composer is that it can handle updating and editing multiple files. With the full screen composer I could quickly review those changes, whereas now where it’s a sidebar I find it much slower and confusing in reviewing multiple files.
After reading this and two other threads about it, I have one simple question. Why not just bring it back if so many people loved it? If it is a total PITA to maintain, OK. But if not, just bring it back. Companies pay huge sums to do market research, and here are many people telling you that they loved and miss the feature. Just bring it back as an option and leave the standard as you have it now.
I am not sure about other aspects of the new version of cursor, but I feel regretful about the changes in composer. I think this is the killer move of cursor, but it has become the same as Windsurf. This is really incomprehensible. If that’s the case, it would be better to directly use Windsurf because I specifically created an account to express my concerns about the development direction of cursor’s composer function, just to provide feedback on what we really need
With what your said it’s like you don’t use your own product at all. The previous Composer UI is almost the only thing I use with Cursor. If it’s not brought back in the next version, I will have to stop my subscription and switch to other IDEs.
For whoever made the product decision to remove it earlier, they should be fired. It’s an unbelievable product mistake and disaster.
… especially great for laptop users out there (I’ve been on my laptop for the last 2 days away from my screens at home and 0.43.5 was unusable with the amount of screen space that I had).