macOS notification banners from Cursor have no sound despite all settings enabled

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Notification banners from Cursor appear silently on macOS — no sound is played — even though all notification and sound settings are enabled both in macOS System Settings and within Cursor itself.

The macOS ncprefs sound bit (bit 1) for the Cursor bundle (com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92) is confirmed set, system alert volume is at 100%, and output is not muted. The Electron notification API used by Cursor does not attach a soundName to the NSUserNotification / UNNotificationContent payload when posting macOS notifications, so macOS shows the banner silently regardless of user preferences.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Enable notifications for Cursor in macOS System Settings > Notifications > Cursor (toggle “Play sound for notifications” ON)
  2. Enable cursor.composer.shouldChimeAfterChatFinishes in Cursor settings
  3. Enable all accessibility.signals.*.sound settings to “on”
  4. Trigger any Cursor notification (e.g., wait for an AI agent to finish responding)
  5. Observe: the notification banner appears but no sound is played
  6. Verified: system alert volume is at 100%, output is not muted, macOS ncprefs sound bit is set for Cursor’s bundle ID

Expected Behavior

Notification banners should play the system alert sound (or a custom sound) when delivered. Please add sound: “default” (or equivalent NSSound name) to the Electron notification options when posting macOS notifications.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.1.14
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: d8673fb56ba50fda33ad78382000b519bb8acb70
Arch: arm64
macOS Sequoia (darwin 25.4.0)

Additional Information

Workarounds attempted: Resetting NotificationCenter and usernoted daemons, toggling notification settings off/on, enabling all accessibility.signals.*.sound settings. None resolve the silent banner issue because the notification payload itself omits the sound.

The fix is to add sound: “default” (or the equivalent NSSound name) to the Electron Notification constructor options when posting macOS notifications. This is a one-line change in the notification posting code.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

6

Hi @ibrahym_saaeed

You’ve done excellent detective work diagnosing this. You’re correct that the macOS notification payload doesn’t include a sound – this is actually intentional rather than a bug.

Cursor uses two separate notification systems:

  1. macOS notification banners – intentionally silent, designed as a visual-only indicator

  2. In-app chime – the audio feedback channel, controlled by the cursor.composer.shouldChimeAfterChatFinishes setting you already enabled

The in-app chime plays a sound through the app itself (not through macOS notifications) when the agent finishes. If you’re not hearing the chime either, make sure Cursor’s window isn’t in focus when the agent finishes (the chime only triggers when you’re away from the window), and check that your system audio output isn’t routing Cursor’s app audio separately.

The accessibility.signals.*.sound settings you enabled are for editor signals (like breakpoints and line folding) and don’t affect agent completion notifications.