Stop hiding settings inside database

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

Cursor IDE

Describe the request

Hi Cursor team,

Many config changes made via the GUI do not write to .vscode/settings.json. Instead, they are pushed into the state.vscdb SQLite database.

I am intentionally avoiding mention of specific settings: that would miss the core issue, which is an ongoing practice of saving configuration in a binary format. We need a fundamental change of practice. (The forums are already littered with examples of such misplaced settings.)

Coming from VSCode, developers are accustomed to the “configuration-as-code” paradigm. The database pattern breaks that workflow, for example:

  • No git/dotfiles tracking: config is impossible to version-control
  • Broken settings sync: standard file-level backup tools cannot read/migrate such config
  • Setup friction: moving to a new machine requires hunting through nested GUI menus to rebuild the overall config

As a fork of VSCode, keeping configuration text-driven is vital. Please expose these persistent settings inside settings.json.

Thank you!

4

Hey, thanks for the feature request and for clearly explaining the core issue. It’s not about one specific setting, it’s about the whole pattern of storing config in a binary DB instead of text files.

The request makes sense. Config-as-code like version control, dotfiles sync, and moving between machines breaks when settings live in state.vscdb. Your points are valid.

This also ties into an older thread about syncing settings and keybindings: Sync of keybindings and settings. It’s basically the same root problem. If settings are meant to be syncable and portable, they need to be in files. I’d suggest adding your vote or a comment there so the signal is in one place where most of the community demand is already collected.

On timeline, I can’t promise anything and there’s no ETA. But the request is logged, and more votes will help raise the priority.