The IDE frequently freezes and becomes unresponsive, requiring a full exit or force kill to restore normal operation. This issue occurs almost daily. The IDE is based on VS Code, and currently, the official version of VS Code is 124, while Cursor is only at 105. I’m not sure if this is intentional or if there are other features involved. At present, it feels like performance and stability have degraded significantly compared to the base VS Code.
The most common contributor we’ve seen is a large number of saved agent conversations. Once your chat history grows, rendering it can stall the main UI thread and freeze the whole window. If you use agent chats regularly, this usually helps:
Remove older agent conversations you no longer need from your chat history. (Deleting a chat is permanent, so only remove ones you don’t want to keep.)
Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P) and run Developer: Reload Window.
To pin down what’s freezing on your specific machine, the most useful thing you can send is a process sample taken while it’s frozen - this works even when the window is fully unresponsive:
Open Terminal and run sample Cursor 10 -file ~/cursor-freeze-sample.txt during a freeze, then attach the resulting file here, or
Open Activity Monitor, select the Cursor process, open the options (⋯) menu in the toolbar, choose Sample Process, and attach the saved result.
If you can instead catch it as the lag builds (before it fully locks up), a CPU profile is just as useful: Command Palette → search Capture CPU Profile, let it freeze for ~15–20s, run the command again to stop, and attach the file. (Start it before the full freeze, since the Command Palette won’t respond once frozen.)
On the version point: the “VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1” line is just the VS Code base that Cursor 3.7.27 is built on — that’s a recent VS Code release, not a 20-version gap (VS Code uses 1.x numbering, so there’s no “1.124”). The freezing isn’t caused by the VS Code base version; it’s a separate performance issue.
@AndrewC - since yours is on Windows, it may have a different cause. A CPU profile captured while it’s hanging (Command Palette → Capture CPU Profile) would help a lot - ideally in a new thread so we can track it separately.
Yes, those two versions are different, and you’re reading them right. Microsoft’s standalone VS Code is at 1.124.2, while Cursor 3.7.36 is built on the VS Code 1.105 base (that’s what the “VS Code Extension API: 1.105.1” line refers to).
I got this wrong in my last reply, so apologies for the confusion. What still holds: this version gap isn’t what’s causing the freezes. The freezing is a separate performance issue we’re aware of and working on, and it sits in Cursor’s own agent and chat layer rather than the VS Code base. The standalone VS Code you’re comparing against doesn’t have those features, so it won’t show the same hang.
The most useful next step is still a process sample or CPU profile captured during a freeze, as in my previous reply. That’s what lets us pin down exactly what’s stalling on your machine.
It’s not caused by having too many tasks. Sometimes it freezes as soon as it’s opened—that’s the most common occurrence—and occasionally it happens at other times as well.
What I meant by version gap is that the latest version of VSCode has added many features. As a cutting-edge IDE, there shouldn’t be such a large version disparity. You can look at Brave as a reference—they almost keep up with Chrome’s version releases.
