Terminal text becomes invisible

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Terminal text becomes invisible after a period. This seems to happen to all terminals (build output, debug, etc.) at the same time.

What fixes it:

• Closing all terminals (closing the window holding all terminals)
• Toggling global color theme
• Restarting Cursor

Steps to Reproduce

This happens randomly after a while of building/running/debugging

Operating System

Linux

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.7.44
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 9d178a4■■■89981b62546448bb32920a8219a5d0
Date: 2025-10-10T15:43:37.500Z
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 6.8.0-84-generic

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. This seems to be a rendering issue since toggling the color theme fixes it.

Please try the following workarounds:

1. Disable hardware acceleration: Settings > search “GPU” > Terminal › Integrated: Gpu Acceleration > restart Cursor
2. Enable Legacy Terminal Tool: Cursor Settings > Chat > Inline editing & Terminal “Legacy Terminal Tool" > enable it > restart Cursor

To help with further diagnostics, could you please share:

• Which shell are you using (bash/zsh/fish)?
• Do you have a custom shell theme (like Powerlevel10k or Oh My Zsh)?
• What GPU/graphics card are you using?

The fact that toggling themes temporarily fixes it suggests it’s related to how the terminal renderer handles text colors.

Let me know if the workarounds help.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

I’ll give those a try next time it happens, thanks (only the next time to see if toggling those might fix it, which could be an indication).

I’m using unmodified Ubuntu LTS bash, with no custom colorization. This used to work fine for months, but recently started giving trouble - (I’ve recently switched desktop managers to KDE and enabled compositor features…).

I’m also forcing (required for my work) the use of my discrete GPU, which is a NVidia Mobile 2070

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

I disabled GPU acceleration when it happened again, and the terminal came back at that moment. (showed the text again).

I have since restarted cursor, and left it disabled, and today it happened again.

I’m trying the Legacy terminal tool next, and have restarted, will let you know if it happens again.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

After doing:

- Disable hardware acceleration: Settings > search “GPU” > Terminal › Integrated: Gpu Acceleration > restart Cursor

• Enable Legacy Terminal Tool: Cursor Settings > Chat > Inline editing & Terminal “Legacy Terminal Tool" > enable it > restart Cursor

It still happens.

I was using the standard Dark+ theme, and when I switch it it works again.
Not sure for how long, since toggling those other options also fixed it temporarily, only to happen again after a while.

[deanrie]

Thanks for the info, that’s very helpful.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

I’m now experimenting with using different Linux compositors. There is KWin (built into KDE) and there is standalone picom as well.

For now I’ve disabled my compositor(s) totally and will see if the problem persists.

(It may still be the choice of theme perhaps? but surely those are just colors?)

[deanrie]

Thanks for the thorough testing and updates. Since both workarounds didn’t resolve the issue permanently, this looks like a deeper rendering bug related to your NVIDIA/KDE setup.

Please share:

• Your NVIDIA driver version (nvidia-smi or check System Settings)
• Try changing the renderer: Settings > search “renderer” > Window: Title Bar Style > try “custom” or “native”

Also worth trying: force a different Electron rendering backend by launching Cursor with:

cursor --disable-gpu-sandbox

or

cursor --use-gl=egl

Let me know if this helps.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

been using it with cursor --disable-gpu-sandbox for a few days now and it has not happened yet. Can’t confirm it fixed, but appears so.

As for driver version:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.95.05 Driver Version: 580.95.05 CUDA Version: 13.0 |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 ... Off | 00000000:01:00.0 Off | N/A |
| N/A 67C P5 12W / 40W | 1911MiB / 4096MiB | 31% Default |
| | | N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

[nestorcolt]

I am also having this issue with Cursor 1.8 + until the most recent version

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

So far for me, I’ve been running with cursor --disable-gpu-sandbox and have disabled my KDE compositor (which I find just causes lag/stutering) and it’s been working fine
for the past 2 weeks.

Hope this helps.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

Just happened again today… the Terminal is blank, but if I select the text I can see it.
Have been running with --disable-gpu-sandbox and disabled compositor(s).

This is the same for all my terminals on the right.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

@deanrie

Try changing the renderer: Settings > search “renderer” > Window: Title Bar Style > try “custom” or “native”

@deanrie where do I try this? I could not find it in Cursor.

[deanrie]

This is in the VS Code settings:

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

Thanks, found it (searching for “renderer” did not show it). Will try.

[LailokenWork (Marius Piedallu van Wyk)]

had to revert, could not find the menu and needed to get work done.