Textual Artifacts in Editor when scrolling

[fakeninja (Robert)]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

When working in a file, every so often I get textual artifacts that makes the code hard to read until I rescale the editing window.

It seems to take place when using a scroll mouse and scrolling up and down.

Font Family is set to:
Consolas, ‘Courier New’, monospace

font size 14

Steps to Reproduce

Open any file at all to see the code. Scroll up and down a flew clicks of the mouse wheel and verify the artifacts.

Theme might need to be set to Dark (Visual Studio)

Expected Behavior

The text should look clear after scrolling and stopping.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.0.75 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: 9e7a27b76730ca7fe4aecaeafc58bac1e2c82120
Date: 2025-11-12T17:34:21.472Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.19045

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

[deanrie]

Hey, thanks for the report. This looks like a graphics rendering issue.

Please try the following and let me know if it helps:

1. Disable hardware acceleration:

   • Help → Toggle Developer Tools
   • In the Console tab, type: window.location.reload() and press Enter
   • Fully close Cursor
   • Reopen Cursor with a flag: cursor.exe --disable-gpu or cursor.exe --disable-hardware-acceleration

2. If it helps, make it permanent:

   • Settings Ctrl+, → search “hardware acceleration”
   • Uncheck “Use hardware acceleration when available”

3. Helpful for diagnosis:

   • What GPU/graphics card do you have? (check in Device Manager)
   • Are you using external monitors or non-standard display scaling?
   • Does it occur with the default theme and font?

Let me know if disabling hardware acceleration resolves it!

[fakeninja (Robert)]

Yeah, disabling GPU just makes it where no text is shown unless I highlight the line.

I have a GTX 1080ti desktop, running 2560x1440 at 125% scaling.

When GPU is enabled and I click once with the scroll wheel, there are no artifacts if I click one more scroll with the wheel the artifacts return; and so on and so forth. So it’s like there’s some overlapping when scrolling of some sort.

• Update, it’s a scaling issue. I dragged the window over to my 2nd monitor at 100% scaling and there’s no artifacts in between scrolling. Switched my main monitor to 100% and there’s no artifacts when scrolling. So I guess in between scroll lines at 125% it’s giving the issue.

[deanrie]

Thanks for the detailed debugging. This is very helpful.

Since you confirmed the issue appears only at 125% scaling, it looks like a rendering bug in how Cursor handles fractional DPI scaling on Windows.

I’ll pass this to the team to investigate the scaling-related rendering issue. In the meantime, you can:

• Keep using 100% scaling as a temporary workaround
• Try Windows compatibility settings for Cursor:
• Right-click cursor.exe → Properties → Compatibility
• Check “Override high DPI scaling behavior”
• Test “Application” and “System (Enhanced)”

Could you also confirm if it occurs with both the default theme and your current “Dark (Visual Studio)” theme? This helps rule out theme-specific issues.

[ssamayoa (Sergio Samayoa)]

Just a note:

Be aware that newer GPU drivers stop supporting “Pascal“ card, GTX 1080ti is Pascal.