Read-only toggle does not work for markdown preview

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

The editor tab for preview mode markdown files ignores the “Editor Read-only in Session” setting.

Turning on read-only mode should prevent you from accidentally editing files you are just trying to observe while the AI edits them, but it does not. Mostly an issue with *.plan.md files for me.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open a markdown file in preview mode.
  2. Notice that you can edit the file
  3. via Ctrl+Shift+p toggle “File: Toggle Active Editor Read-only in Session”
  4. Notice that no lock icon appeared on the tab and you can still edit the file
  5. Switch to markdown view
  6. Notice there is a lock in the tab header and you cannot edit the file via this tab

Expected Behavior

step 4 should be the same as step 6.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

MissingLockIcon.png
MissingLockIcon.png372×373 20.3 KB

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Version: 2.5.22
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 0eda506a36f70f8dc866c1ea642fcaf620090080
Date: 2026-02-23T00:15:21.265Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.4.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.17.0-20-generic

Additional Information

In VSCodium, the preview mode is not editable at all, hence my assumption that this is a bug on the Cursor sode of the fork.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

4

Hey, thanks for the report. I checked the screenshot and yeah, in preview mode the lock icon doesn’t show up and the file stays editable, even though everything works correctly in markdown mode.

I’ve passed this on to the team. No ETA yet, but your report will help with prioritization.

As a workaround, switch to markdown mode not preview before enabling read-only, then the lock works as expected.

Let me know if you run into anything else.

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