Opening a new chat tab causes previous chat tabs to disappear – can't have multiple chats open simultaneously

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When opening a new chat tab in Cursor IDE, any previously opened chat tabs disappear and become inaccessible. This makes it impossible to keep multiple chat sessions open at the same time. Each new chat overwrites or hides the previous one, so there is no way to switch between concurrent conversations.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Cursor IDE with Layout set to “editor” (chat as editor tabs).
  2. Start a new chat (Tab 1) and send a message.
  3. Open a second new chat tab using the new chat button.
  4. Observe that the first chat tab has disappeared and is no longer accessible from the tab bar.
  5. Repeat: opening any new chat tab causes the previous one to vanish.

Expected Behavior

Each new chat tab should open as an additional tab without closing or hiding previously opened chat tabs. Users should be able to keep multiple chats open simultaneously and freely switch between them, just like regular editor tabs in VS Code.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Cursor Version: 3.1.10
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: dacbe9b31599a253763e4910eb6ab38704653320
Date: 2026-04-13T11:39:16.806Z
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

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

5

Hey, this isn’t a bug, it’s the default behavior. Cursor keeps up to 5 chat tabs open by default, and when you create a new one at the limit, the oldest inactive tab closes automatically.

Your chats aren’t lost, you can restore them from history in the Agents sidebar.

Fix: increase the limit in Cursor Settings > Agents > Max Tab Count. You can pick 10, Unlimited, or set a custom value.

Also, if you turn on Open chat as editor tabs in Cursor Settings > General > Layout, the tabs are more likely to persist after restart.

More details with steps and screenshots: Chat tabs dissapearing - #5 by Colin