Stale Electron codesign Identifier on macOS Cursor Helper bundles

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Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

On the macOS distribution of Cursor, three of the four helper bundles inside Cursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/ have a codesign Identifier that doesn’t match their CFBundleIdentifier. The Info.plist’s bundle identifier is correctly rewritten to com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92.helper, but the codesign Identifier inside the signature blob still carries the stock Electron framework value com.github.Electron.helper.

Only the main Cursor Helper.app is signed correctly; however, Cursor Helper (GPU).app, Cursor Helper (Plugin).app, and Cursor Helper (Renderer).app all carry the stale identifier.
This is signed by Cursor’s team (VDXQ22DGB9) and notarized correctly.

Steps to Reproduce

Tested against /Applications/Cursor.app installed from cursor.com.

# Host - correct
codesign -d --verbose=2 /Applications/Cursor.app 2>&1 | grep Identifier
# => Identifier=com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92
# Main helper - correct
codesign -d --verbose=2 "/Applications/Cursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/Cursor Helper.app" 2>&1 | grep Identifier
# => Identifier=com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92.helper
# GPU / Plugin / Renderer helpers - WRONG, all show the stale Electron identifier
codesign -d --verbose=2 "/Applications/Cursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/Cursor Helper (GPU).app" 2>&1 | grep Identifier
codesign -d --verbose=2 "/Applications/Cursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/Cursor Helper (Plugin).app" 2>&1 | grep Identifier
codesign -d --verbose=2 "/Applications/Cursor.app/Contents/Frameworks/Cursor Helper (Renderer).app" 2>&1 | grep Identifier
# => Identifier=com.github.Electron.helper  (for all three)

Expected Behavior

All helper bundles’ codesign Identifier should match their rewritten CFBundleIdentifier:

Bundle Expected codesign Identifier
Cursor Helper (GPU).app com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92.helper.GPU or similar…
Cursor Helper (Plugin).app com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92.helper.Plugin or similar…
Cursor Helper (Renderer).app com.todesktop.230313mzl4w4u92.helper.Renderer or similar…

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 3.5.17
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: d5b2fc092e16007956c9e5047f76097b9e626ca0
Date: 2026-05-20T02:43:31.559Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.5.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

7

Thanks for the detailed report and the codesign verification steps. This is a confirmed bug - we were able to reproduce it on our end as well. All three helper bundles (GPU, Plugin, Renderer) carry the stale com.github.Electron.helper identifier instead of matching the production bundle identifier.

This is a known issue that our team is actively working on. It stems from the signing pipeline not explicitly setting identifiers for the helper bundles. You’re right that it impacts firewall rules, MDM policies, and TCC decisions that rely on codesign identifiers. This related thread reports a downstream consequence of the same gap (repeated macOS permission prompts for MCP servers).

We’ll follow up here when a fix ships. Thank you for taking the time to report this.