OOM Crash on Windows 16GB RAM — Repeated OTLPExporterError "Trace spans collection not enabled" in Console Before Crash

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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Cursor crashes with an OOM error during normal AI-assisted coding sessions. Prior to each crash, the Developer Console fills with repeated [otel.error] entries from the Extension Host, all returning HTTP 400 with the message “Trace spans collection is not enabled for this user”. These errors appear to be continuously retrying a failed telemetry export, likely causing a memory leak that compounds the Electron renderer’s ~4GB ceiling until the process is killed.
The errors appear in pairs – one from [Extension Host] and one from [otel.error] – and repeat continuously without stopping until crash.
Attempted workaround cursor --js-flags=–max-old-space-size=8192 extended session stability slightly but did not prevent the crash, confirming the issue is in the Chromium renderer process, not the Node.js heap.

Steps to Reproduce

Open Cursor with a project
Open Ctrl+Shift+P → Developer: Toggle Developer Tools → Console tab
Filter by OTEL (as shown in screenshot)
Begin an AI Chat or Composer session
Observe continuous OTLPExporterError 400 errors spamming the console
Continue working – renderer memory climbs until OOM crash

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

OTEL.PNG
OTEL.PNG1921×452 70.7 KB

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

Version: 2.5.20

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

3

Hey, this is a known issue.

The "Trace spans collection is not enabled for this user" error usually means Privacy Mode is enabled, and the server rejects telemetry because of that. The spans keep retrying and building up instead of being dropped.

Workaround: try turning off Privacy Mode in Cursor Settings > General > Privacy Mode. That lets the server accept spans instead of rejecting them, which stops the memory buildup.

If you need Privacy Mode on (for example, for proprietary code), the only option right now is to rotate chats often and watch memory in Ctrl+Shift+P > Developer: Open Process Explorer.

Related threads with more context:

The team is aware of this. No ETA yet, but your report helps with prioritization. Let me know if turning off Privacy Mode helps.

4

Hey!

Thanks for your response. After some investigating my Data Sharing has been enabled this entire time already so Privacy mode must not be the root cause here. I will continue to keep rotating chats though.

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