Every time I use Cursor, it seems that the user interface has been jumbled up. The frustration of finding where the agent mode is isn’t, the chat panel is on the left then on the right it’s gone. I can’t find it.
Command + E works and then doesn’t work, and then sometimes only works in certain circumstances when I click a panel
There are all these ridiculous icons that don’t seem to do anything
There is all the spare space where the agent and editor mode used to be
This is really frustrating and causing significant mental overhead to use this software.
I know the Cursor team are trying to be innovative, however you’ve gotta be understanding that the people using it don’t want the tool to get in the way of their work.
Continually shuffling around the user interface like this is making the tool more difficult to use that actually doing the work.
Please have some consideration for your users and stop with the rapid development of the user interface.
Thank you pointing out the gear icon, this may be helpful.
We as developed build muscle memory memorising shortcuts, so when you take something away, and replace it with a shortcut i.e. Ctl + E then remove that, it becomes really disrupting.
The version of Cursor was nightly, but I am changing this back to Default, the bow wave at the beta end is way too much for productivity.
Usually I get an agent to deal with these things, and if found bugs in the UI today.
It went and made a whole bunch of shortcuts, that by random application I managed to get my UI back to shape:
When you first open Cursor, run these in order:
Move agents panel to LEFT, code to RIGHT:
Press Cmd + Shift + S (toggles sidebar position)
OR: View → Appearance → Move Primary Side Bar Right
Show the agents list/sidebar:
Press Cmd + B (toggles sidebar visibility)
OR: Press Cmd + I (toggles side panel)
OR: Press Cmd + Option + S (toggles Agents sidebar - Option is ⌥ key)
If agents are showing as tabs instead of sidebar:
Press Cmd + Shift + P → Type “Switch to Agent Layout” → Enter
Keyboard Shortcuts Reference
Shortcut
Action
What It Does
Cmd + Shift + S
Toggle Sidebar Position
Moves sidebar from left ↔ right
Cmd + B
Toggle Sidebar Visibility
Shows/hides the primary sidebar
Cmd + I
Toggle Side Panel
Shows/hides side panel (agents)
Cmd + Option + S (⌥)
Toggle Agents Sidebar
Shows/hides Agents sidebar specifically
Cmd + Shift + P
Command Palette
Opens command search (use for “Switch to Agent Layout”)
Glad the gear icon helped! And great shortcut list, I think it’ll be useful for other users too.
About the nightly build, yeah, it did have a few bugs with the layout and title bar, but those are fixed now. The default channel is much more stable for day-to-day work.
I used the gear icon yesterday, an attempt to rearrange my curse of windows, and it had. confusing operation.
When in edit mode, which was the mode I wanted to get out of, all it would do would open the settings panel and had a very different behaviour than when it is in agent mode.
I think it would be more helpful if this particular control worked the same no matter what mode the system was in.
I noticed once I switched it back to agent mode with random commands and. Button pressing that there was access to the settings page within the gear icon menu in agent mode.
Having it behave differently, depending on what mode the system is in seems to be a frustrating design decision, which could be remove by having the gear icon work the same no matter what mode it’s in.
It’s like if you’re in a car. When driving on a normal two-way street, turning the wheel left turns the car left. However, if you go down a one way street, if you turn the wheel left, the car goes right.
Please bring back the hovercard at the bottom of the file that I used to navigate the changes the agent made. It’s so much worse now that it’s at the top. Is there any way to keep the old navigation?
Keyboard Shortcuts Reference