Terminal Failure

Describe the Bug

This error:

The terminal process failed to launch: A native exception occurred during launch (posix_spawnp failed.).

…pops up and there’s nothing I can do now. I’ve restarted Cursor. I’ve followed the “open help” button that takes me to VSC and recommends a settings review. But, I’m totally lost.

The error first ocurred when I tried to check a commit with a “git checkout” command and now persists no matter what is done.

Steps to Reproduce

Everything I do in terminal now reproduces the error.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 0.44.11
VSCode Version: 1.93.1
Commit: fe574d0820377383143b2ea26aa6ae28b3425220
Date: 2025-01-03T07:59:06.361Z
Electron: 30.5.1
Chromium: 124.0.6367.243
Node.js: 20.16.0
V8: 12.4.254.20-electron.0
OS: Darwin x64 20.6.0

Additional Information

I cannot find the settings that VSC recommends to check. From reading that page, Troubleshoot Visual Studio Code Integrated Terminal launch failures I’m not sure if this is even the solution.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

Hey, have you got a screenshot of where in the editor this is happening?
This may help us diagnose the issue and fix it.

Attempts to bring up a new terminal window generate this error. Same with any git command. Cursor directed me to operate out of the regular Terminal app after not being able to solve.

Hey, can you check what is selected as your default terminal, as Cursor may be trying to launch the wrong thing!

What should I be using? The settings are shown in the screenshots. Note, I’m on an older Mac running BigSur just in case there is something applicable there.

What options do you have in this dropdown?

Set the dropdown to zsh in this screenshot, and see if that helps!

I have the same issue for VSCode and Cursor, with the integrated default profile set to zsh. The only thing I’ve found which reliably fixes it (albeit temporarily) is a complete reboot of my system, which is quite an inconvenience given how frequently the error occurs.

Anecdotally, the more Cursor/VSCode windows and/or terminal tabs I have open on my system, the quicker I run into this error which necessitates a system reboot.

For context, I am using the latest versions of each of these programs on macOS Sequoia version 15.3.2 with a MacBook M2 Pro with 16GB RAM

Edit: attached a gif to demonstrate the issue:
2025-03-24 20.31.22