Severe memory use / OS “out of application memory” after updating to Cursor 3.0.12 (MacBook Pro M1)

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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

After updating Cursor, the Mac became unusable under a workload that was stable for about a year. macOS showed “Your system has run out of application memory.” In Force Quit Applications, Cursor was reported at ~65.80 GB RAM. Activity Monitor / top also showed multiple large Cursor Helper (R …) processes (hundreds of MB each) when several project windows were open.

Steps to Reproduce

Open 4 projects in Cursor on MacBook Pro M1 macOS: 26.3.1

Expected Behavior

Expected: Memory use scales roughly with number of windows/projects (GB range, not tens of GB for Cursor alone).

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Cursor: 3.0.12 (Universal), Stable, Default track
VS Code base: 1.105.1
Commit: a80ff7dfcaa45d7750f6e30be457261379c29b00
Build date: 2026-04-04T00:13:18.452Z
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
OS: macOS Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

5

Hi @Olex_Kolesnykov,

This is a known class of issue on macOS, particularly when running multiple project windows. There are a couple of known causes our team is actively working on, and I need one piece of diagnostic info to narrow down which one is hitting you_

Could you run this in Terminal while the memory is high?

ps aux | grep -i "cursor" | grep -v grep

This will show all Cursor processes including any that may be orphaned (still running from previously closed windows). Look for any extension-host processes with high CPU (80%+) — those are the likely culprits.

Immediate workarounds:

  • Always fully quit Cursor with Cmd+Q rather than just closing individual windows. Closing windows can leave helper processes running in the background.

  • Restart Cursor periodically if you’re keeping multiple projects open for extended sessions_

  • To kill any currently orphaned processes right now: pkill -9 -i cursor in Terminal, then relaunch Cursor.

You may also find this related thread helpful: Cursor Helper processes never terminate on macOS

Let me know what that ps aux command shows — it’ll help confirm the exact cause.