Issues with Markdown Preview in Cursor

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I am experiencing a couple of issues related to Markdown preview in Cursor.

  • When Cursor starts, the Markdown preview does not appear, and the terminal is also missing. The app remains frozen unless I close all tabs.
  • When I preview a Markdown file in the editor, the rendering is noticeably slow. It does not display immediately the way it does in VS Code.

I use AI to create documents in Markdown and read them in the editor while working, so these issues have significantly affected my workflow. Because of this, I decided to switch to VS Code for now.

However, I actually prefer Cursor and would like to continue using it, so I would really appreciate it if these issues could be fixed.

Thank you.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Add the following setting to settings.json:
"workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.md": "vscode.markdown.preview.editor"
},
  1. Launch Cursor.

Also, for reference, the sluggish Markdown preview issue occurs all the time regardless of the setting above.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.0.9 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 93e276db8a03af947eafb2d10241e2de17806c20
Date: 2026-04-03T02:06:46.446Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the detailed report. Both issues are known.

Startup freeze: this happens because the editorAssociations setting makes the markdown preview renderer activate for all .md files on launch, which blocks the main thread. As a workaround, remove this setting from settings.json:

"workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.md": "vscode.markdown.preview.editor"
}

Instead, open the preview manually for specific files when you need it.

Slow preview rendering: Cursor uses its own markdown renderer, not the native VS Code one, and it has performance issues. The team is aware, and your report helps with prioritization.

I get that this disrupts your workflow, especially if you work with markdown docs a lot. For now, manually opening preview should at least fix the startup freeze.

1 Like