I’d love a mode in Cursor where the code editor area is hidden permanently, leaving only the left sidebar (Explorer, Git, etc.) and the right AI panel.
This would enable a “True Vibe Coding” experience — focusing only on AI interactions and project context, without any code in the middle distracting from the flow.
Right now, even if I close all editors, there’s still a blank panel in the middle. It would be great to have a toggle or setting like:
Hide Editor Area → removes the middle completely
Startup option: “Open with no editor area”
Shortcut to switch between “normal coding” and “vibe coding”
This would make Cursor perfect for those of us who want to rely fully on AI, context, and high-level structure, not manual code editing.
Ctrl + Alt + E is the shortcut to show / hide the editor area.
If you’d also like to hide the primary side bar that shows the File Explorer, Source Control, etc., that can be toggled on or off with the shortcut Ctrl + B.
And Ctrl + J is the shortcut to show / hide the terminal found at the bottom of the screen by default.
If you hide all those panels, you should only see the Agents side bar and the chat area.
In my experience, if set up the panel visibility the way I want it and then use File > Save Workspace As…, when I reopen the workspace from that file, the panel visibility is the same way it was previously. If you later show the editor area and then close Cursor, I believe the editor area will still be showing when you start that workspace again, so it doesn’t quite do what you want, but at least it gets you close.
And if you regularly open multiple Cursor instances at a time, closing them and re-opening them in stack LIFO order seems to help; otherwise the various instances could switch their settings, including panel visibility and zoom level.
Unfortunately, Ctrl(Cmd) + Alt + E also hides the left side bar (workspace, Source Control, etc.), at least on macOS. Still, good to know.
I wonder if there is a way to hide only the central area, or perhaps to reduce its min width constraint - that would really suit my use case. I’m using a different IDE for reading/editing code, and Cursor only for AI interactions.
If your editor doesn’t have have any files open, at least on Windows, it shows a list of all the shortcuts available for customizing which panel areas are visible:
