Hey, thanks for the detailed report. There’s an important detail here: Codex disappearing after the update isn’t caused by your settings, and it’s not random. The right Secondary Side Bar where the Cursor Agent tabs live is reserved for Cursor’s agent UI, so extensions like Codex can’t register their container there anymore. That’s why Open Codex Sidebar from the right menu doesn’t work. You were on an older build for a long time, and 3.15.19 is the first build where this restriction reached you, so it looks like the update wiped your layout.
What actually brings Codex back:
- Codex needs to live in the left Activity Bar. If it ended up nested under Explorer, drag its section header onto the Activity Bar to get a separate icon. If it gets stuck, run
View: Reset View Locations, thenDeveloper: Reload Window. Dragging sometimes doesn’t work on the first try. - For side by side, open Codex via
Codex: New Codex Agentfrom the Command Palette, then useView: Split Editor Rightor drag the tab to the right edge of the editor area. It’ll land in a separate editor group next to your code.
One thing to avoid: don’t manually move Codex into the Secondary Side Bar. It renders as empty there.
Same case and working workarounds are discussed here: Cursor 3.15.6: Codex can no longer be moved into the Agent tab group
About New Activity Bar Entry and the name User View Container with no way to rename it: the container should automatically pick up the name of the first view inside once it loads. There’s no manual rename for these user containers right now, and that’s a VS Code limitation. I passed this to the team, along with the general feedback about layout resets on updates. Let me know if Codex still won’t settle correctly on the left.