System color theme is not picked up

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When I change system theme on Macbook, Cursor doesn’t change

Steps to Reproduce

Open Cursor and change theme

Expected Behavior

Theme changes

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.7.0-pre.105.patch.0 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 561cd068bc5ff3a5ba120dbcb469267cd6e6cfe0
Date: 2026-03-20T18:25:23.896Z (2 days ago)
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Nightly
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.2.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

4

Hey, this is a known issue. Auto Detect Color Scheme needs you to manually set your preferred themes for Light and Dark mode.

Workaround:

  1. Open Settings Cmd+,
  2. Search for window.autoDetectColorScheme and make sure it’s enabled
  3. A bit below, find workbench.preferredDarkColorTheme and workbench.preferredLightColorTheme, then pick the themes you want for each mode

After that, switching with the system theme should work.

More details in a similar thread: Auto Detect Color Scheme not working on MacOS

Let me know if it still doesn’t help.