Not that it’s a surprise to anyone, but Anti-Gravity pulled the same move and completely removed the IDE, and now their subreddit is exploding with complaints.
I’m genuinely surprised how is it that the makers of these tools are so blind to their users’ needs.
I think its a bad move by the cursor team to go this route, people like and need the editor view and that is one of the reasons why I subscribed.
A few updates for the thread.
Startup toggle : The “Open Agents Window on startup” toggle is now available in Cursor Settings for everyone who had agents window open by default. This is not available for users who never were defaulted into opening the agent window in the first place. Turn it off to launch into the Editor by default. If you don’t see it, update to the latest version (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P > Attempt Update, then restart Cursor).
cursor . from terminal: The startup toggle controls what opens when you launch Cursor from the dock or app icon. cursor . from terminal uses a separate path and may still open the Agents Window regardless of the toggle. Use cursor . --classic to open the Editor directly with your folder loaded.
Windows shortcut tip (via @Ian_Chan): Add --classic to the end of your Cursor shortcut target: "C:\Program Files\cursor\Cursor.exe" --classic. On Mac, a shell alias works: alias cursor='cursor --classic'.
@Maelle_Le_Herisse : The issue you’re describing - “Open Editor Window” focusing an unrelated workspace instead of opening one for the current agent - is a different bug from the startup-default topic in this thread. Our team is aware of workspace-context issues in the window-switching flow. Could you open a new thread for it so we can track it separately? Include:
How many agents you have open when it happens
Whether each agent is working in a different repo/worktree
What you see when you click “Open Editor Window” (which window gets focused)
Your version info is already included, thanks.
Updated to 3.5.33 and I don’t see the toggle and right now it automatically opens into Agents Window.
This worked though:
Thank you!!!
Added this:
alias e="cursor --classic"
export EDITOR="cursor --classic -w"
Hey Mohit, I did it here : "Open Editor Window" on an agent focuses an unrelated workspace instead of opening one for that agent 
Just want to let you know that the toggle works for me perfectly. Linux, Cursor 3.5.33. Thank you and the whole Cursor team very much for listening to the users feedback!
Cursor team does listen, but its weird that we have come to be so grateful that they let us optionally toggle new features after they force the new features on to us without warning breaking our work. The Agents Window being the default and hiding the normal editor window is not what I consider a small change. The toggle and making these new features optional should have been the default rollout for big changes. They do this regularly, like ever 2-3 weeks they break something core and then like a week later after people are begging and annoyed, they make it optional. What did they expect? Cursor devs can’t be that naive. It’s just an abusive relationship at this point. Try using their biggest competitor, Copilot, and you will not get these kind of massive interruptions from updates. Things constantly changing and breaking is a Cursor unique feature.
P.S. I love using Cursor, that is why its so frustrating when they are constantly changing stuff and forcing it on us.
Super annoying. This should never have even been released, toggle or not.
Cursor is an IDE. When I open my IDE I want to see the IDE. Not ads, not announcements, not an additional separate program. jfc. Why does this even need to be said?
Focus less on what would be personally preferable to you for business reasons, and more on what your customers actually want and pay for.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that breaking the users workflow by trying to hide the editor view, and by trying to make users to use Cursor the way Cursor product team would like them to, was a big missstep. Cursor still has this unique proposal of being a great AI-powered IDE, where all AI stuff plays perfectly well together, but the developer is still the one who stays in control on all levels, and decides how much AI assistance (if any) does he need in a given moment. In my case, most of the time I use Cursor just for code editing, as its pro-active code completion is out of this world.
So by trying to push users away from what still makes Cursor unique (even LLMs would tell you that), and by trying to make Cursor just like almost every other player on the market nowadays, the consequences must be clear: Both new and existing users will compare Cursor more and more to the competitors, and in many cases, the decision will not be in favor of Cursor.
I can only imagine that the “glorious” idea to reduce Cursor to just another agentic coding tool was based on some information we don’t know yet (probably a possible aquisition by one of the big players in the AI space).
But I still think, that by implementing the agents window opt-out switch, the Cursor team showed us that they still value their current customers (us), and that they are ready to put their money where their mouth is. So, for that, thanks, guys, awesome job! But please, don’t try this sh%t again. 
Exactly. What makes Cursor great is it helps programmers actually program, especially as costs of models increases people are going to also fall back to just doing more programming themselves with Cursor’s amazing tab complete.
I read an article that said that Cursor gets most of its revenue from enterprise plans, so basically most of this forum are probably on individual or small company plans, and represent a very small slice of their Customer base. I think that is why we are seeing this race to make the best Agentic dominant tool because big companies want that. It’s unfortunate but the reality.
If you don’t see the toggle but the Agents Window still opens by default, cursor . --classic (which you already found) is the most reliable workaround for now. We’re tracking the toggle visibility issue.
Since the original request here is addressed (the toggle + --classic flag), I’m going to close this thread to keep things focused. If anyone hits new issues, feel free to open a new thread and we’ll take a look.