Integrated terminal: copying selected Japanese/CJK text produces mojibake (UTF-8 bytes reinterpreted as CP1252) on Windows

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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor CLI

Describe the Bug

When I select Japanese text displayed in the integrated terminal and copy it
(mouse selection + Ctrl+C or right-click copy), the text placed on the clipboard
is corrupted. The UTF-8 byte sequence appears to be re-decoded as CP1252/Latin-1,
so every Japanese character turns into 2-3 Western accented characters.

Example: the string “RENTAI HOSHO” written in kanji (U+9023 U+5E2F U+4FDD U+8A3C)
becomes: e f a c a a e e c (CP1252 mojibake like “e a” accented letters)
Pasting into ANY app (LINE, Gmail, X, or back into the terminal input itself)
shows the same corrupted result, so the corruption happens at copy time,
not paste time.

ASCII-only text copies fine. Only non-ASCII (Japanese, and presumably all CJK)
is corrupted.

What I verified (isolation tests)

  • Windows system locale is ja-JP, ANSI codepage 932 (so this is NOT the OS
    ANSI conversion – that would produce Shift-JIS-style mojibake, not CP1252-style)
  • No custom encoding settings: files.encoding / autoGuessEncoding are defaults
  • Writing the same Japanese string to the clipboard via PowerShell Set-Clipboard
    and pasting into the same target apps works perfectly → clipboard and target
    apps are fine
  • Copying the same Japanese string from the terminal selection is corrupted 100%
    of the time

Steps to Reproduce

  1. On Windows (Japanese locale), open the integrated terminal
  2. Print any Japanese text, e.g.: echo “test JAPANESE-TEXT-HERE 12345”
  3. Select the output line with the mouse and press Ctrl+C (or right-click copy)
  4. Paste anywhere (another app or the terminal input)

Expected: the selected text is pasted as-is
Actual: every non-ASCII character is replaced by CP1252 mojibake

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

  • Cursor version: 3.12.10
  • OS: Windows 11 Home 10.0.26200
  • System locale: ja-JP (ACP 932)
  • Shell: PowerShell 5.1 / Git Bash (happens with both)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report with the isolation tests. It really helps.

This is a known bug. When copying selected text from the integrated terminal, non ASCII characters like CJK and Japanese get corrupted. The UTF 8 bytes are being interpreted as Latin 1 or CP1252. Your case is especially useful because it reproduces locally on Windows without SSH and without a TUI, just plain PowerShell or Git Bash. Earlier reports were mostly via SSH plus a TUI. We’re tracking the issue, but I can’t share a timeline for a fix yet.

One quick question. Does the text display correctly in the terminal, and only the copied result is corrupted? Or does the terminal display also show mojibake? That will help narrow down where the issue happens.

For now, as a workaround, copying via Set-Clipboard in PowerShell works correctly, like you noticed. I’ll post an update in the thread if anything changes.