Review with line wrap and character highlight is broken

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Title: Agent “Review” panel ignores diffEditor.wordWrap and diffEditor.diffAlgorithm, and wraps only the right column
Environment

  • Cursor 2.6.20 (VS Code 1.95.1)
  • Linux (Debian 13, GNOME, x86_64)
    Settings in ~/.config/Cursor/User/settings.json:
    “diffEditor.renderSideBySide”: true,
    “diffEditor.useInlineViewWhenSpaceIsLimited”: false,
    “diffEditor.wordWrap”: “on”,
    “diffEditor.diffAlgorithm”: “advanced”,
    “diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace”: false
    Steps to reproduce
  1. Have the agent make a small edit to a file with long lines (e.g. a LaTeX paragraph).
  2. Before clicking Keep, click on the diff block in the chat. The Agent “Review” tab opens (title: “Review: ”, showing “N Pending Change”).
  3. Observe the two-column side-by-side view.
    Actual behavior
  • The RIGHT column wraps long lines correctly.
  • The LEFT column does NOT wrap — long lines are truncated with a horizontal scrollbar, while the right column next to it is already wrapped. The two columns end up visually misaligned.
  • Changed regions are highlighted only at line granularity: the whole changed line is colored red/green, there is no word- or character-level highlight of what actually differs, even with diffAlgorithm set to “advanced”.
    Expected behavior
  • Both columns should honor diffEditor.wordWrap (“on”) symmetrically.
  • The Review panel should honor diffEditor.diffAlgorithm (“advanced”) and highlight only the differing sub-line tokens, like the native DiffEditor does (e.g. the one opened by “File: Compare Active File with…”).
    Comparison with the native DiffEditor
    “File: Compare Active File with…” on the same pair of files correctly:
  • wraps both columns,
  • highlights only the changed word/character span.
    So the DiffEditor component supports everything needed; the Agent Review panel seems to use a different renderer that doesn’t inherit those capabilities.
    Why it matters
    The main value of an in-editor coding agent over CLI tools (Claude Code, aider, etc. with Meld for diff) is exactly the “see the diff, click, accept” loop. Without proper wrap and sub-line highlighting in the Review panel, it’s hard to read long-line changes (very common in LaTeX, Markdown, prose) and users are forced to manually duplicate files and use Compare Active File with… to get a usable diff.
    Screenshots

Steps to Reproduce

  • Cursor 2.6.20 (VS Code 1.95.1)

Expected Behavior

  • Cursor 2.6.20 (VS Code 1.95.1)

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Screenshot From 2026-04-21 11-13-22.png
Screenshot From 2026-04-21 11-13-22.png1360×768 75.5 KB

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

  • Cursor 2.6.20 (VS Code 1.95.1)

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

5

Hey, thanks for the report. The extra detail with settings, repro steps, and the comparison with the native DiffEditor really helps.

I can confirm the bug is reproducible, and the issue is in the Review panel itself. It uses its own renderer that doesn’t read diffEditor.wordWrap or diffEditor.diffAlgorithm from the config. That’s why wrap is asymmetric (the left side doesn’t wrap) and why you don’t get sub-line highlights, only line-level red and green. The native diff editor via “Compare Active File with…” picks these settings up, like you noticed.

We’re already tracking this internally. I also logged a separate note about diffAlgorithm: 'legacy' and character-level highlights, since the existing ticket was mostly about wrap. I can’t share an ETA yet, but I’ll post an update in this thread when I have one.