Syntax/occurrence highlighting on Anysphere Dark color theme does not work

Bug Report
1

Describe the Bug

On VSCode/Jetbrains, other occurrences of a variable are normally highlighted when any occurrence is single clicked on. However, a default out-of-the-box install of Cursor makes it appear like equivalent functionality does not exist in Cursor. After trial and error, I’ve confirmed that this issue is isolated to the default ‘Anysphere Dark’ color theme, which can make it appear like it simply does not work on a fresh install. On switching the Workbench Color Theme to any other theme (such as VSCode’s Dark Modern default) fixes the highlighting.

For context, I’m reproducing this in a Dart project.

Steps to Reproduce

  • Open a Flutter/Dart project (though this is likely unrelated to Flutter/Dart).
  • Confirm that your Workbench Color Theme is set to Anysphere Dark.
  • Click on any occurrence of a variable.
  • Observe that other occurrences of that variable are not highlighted.

Expected Behavior

  • Other occurrences of that variable are highlighted.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

It appears that as a new user, I can only embed 1 screenshot directly into the post, so I’ll link the two to be safe. Both are CDN links after uploading through this forum. In the screenshots, note the difference in occurrence highlighting when the var sum is clicked on.

  1. Anysphere Dark screenshot
  2. Dark Modern screenshot (also embedded below)

cursor theme bug dark modern.png
cursor theme bug dark modern.png375×162 10.6 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 0.43.6
VSCode Version: 1.93.1
Commit: a846435528b4b760494a836f96f0739889253530
Date: 2024-12-06T05:11:55.168Z
Electron: 30.5.1
Chromium: 124.0.6367.243
Node.js: 20.16.0
V8: 12.4.254.20-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 23.6.0

Additional Information

Workaround is to switch the Workbench Color Theme.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

2

I like the Anysphere Dark theme, so I added this to settings.json:

"workbench.colorCustomizations": {
        "editor.wordHighlightBackground": "#FFEB3B40", // Highlight for variable occurrences
        "editor.wordHighlightStrongBackground": "#C6FF0050" // For write-access occurrences
    }
3

@alexsafayan I did something similar as a workaround too, thanks for sharing! Cursor really needs to fix this issue so we have occurrence highlighting by default.