Mac Terminal Option+Left Arrow Produces ";3D"

[chrisbabayans]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Option+left or right arrow used to skip to the beginning of the string in either direction in terminal, but now it produces a string itself.

Steps to Reproduce

Open Cursor IDE, open terminal, type a few strings and press Option+Left arrow

Expected Behavior

Option + left arrow should skip to the beginning of the string to the left of the cursor

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.3.30
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 3dc559280adc5f931ade8e25c7b85393842acf30
Date: 2026-05-09T18:28:42.332Z
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 23.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

[deanrie]

Hey, this is a known regression in 3.3.x. The default Kitty keyboard protocol in the terminal changed, and now Option+Arrow sends CSI u instead of ESC b and ESC f, which zsh, bash, and readline expect for word-wise navigation. Discussion and workarounds here: Option + Arrow keys no longer work in the integrated terminal

Two workaround options:

1. In settings.json:

   "terminal.integrated.enableKittyKeyboardProtocol": false
   

2. If that doesn’t help for you, add this to ~/.zshrc:

   bindkey '^[[1;3C' forward-word
   bindkey '^[[1;3D' backward-word
   

   then restart your shell.

We’re tracking the bug, but I can’t share an ETA for a fix yet. I’ll merge this thread into the main one so the discussion stays in one place.