Top-anchored reading for chat responses (or opt-out of auto-scroll to bottom)

Ideas Feature Requests
1

Feature request for product/service

Chat

Describe the request

Problem:
When an assistant response streams in, the chat pane auto-scrolls to the bottom. When the reply finishes, I’m at the end of the message and have to scroll up to read from the beginning. That’s backwards for long answers with code, plans, or step-by-step explanations.

The same thing happens while I’m composing: if I scroll up to reference an earlier message, wrapping to a new line (Shift+Enter) often jumps the view back to the bottom and I lose my place.

Requested behavior:
Option A (preferred): Top-anchored reading

When a new assistant message starts, anchor the viewport at the top of that message so I can read downward as content streams in — similar to reading a document or terminal output from the start.

Option B (acceptable alternative): Smart follow-scroll

Only auto-scroll if I’m already at the bottom. If I’ve scrolled up, don’t move the viewport until I explicitly scroll down or send a new message. Optionally show a subtle “new content below” indicator.

Option C (minimum): Setting

Bring back a user-facing “Auto-scroll to bottom” toggle (removed in Cursor 2.0) for Chat and Agent panes.

Why it matters

Long technical responses are easier to follow from the top
Cross-referencing earlier messages while typing shouldn’t fight the UI
Matches behavior users expect from shells and many chat UIs (“follow only if I’m at the bottom”)
Environment: Cursor on macOS (Agent / Chat pane)

Operating System (if it applies)

MacOS

4

+1 — this would make a big difference for how I work with Agent.

When a long response streams in, the chat keeps jumping to the bottom, so I end up seeing the last lines first. I then have to scroll up to find the beginning, read downward, and often fight the UI again while the agent is still generating output.

Preferred behavior: when a new assistant message starts, anchor the viewport at the top of that message so I can scroll down as content appears. A setting to disable auto-scroll (or “follow only if I’m already at the bottom”) would also help.

Thanks for considering this.

5

Feature request for product/service

Chat

Describe the request

Hello Cursor Team,

I would like to suggest a usability improvement for Cursor Chat that would make long AI responses much easier to read.

When Cursor generates a long reply, I often find that the chat view is positioned near the bottom of the response. Before I can start reading, I have to manually scroll upward to find the first sentence of that reply.

Sometimes I scroll too far and enter the previous message, so I then have to scroll down again to locate exactly where the new reply begins.

This happens repeatedly when working with long conversations, and it makes reading Cursor’s responses less convenient than it needs to be.

My suggestion is to provide a setting such as:

“Automatically position the chat at the beginning of the latest AI response when generation finishes.”

When enabled, after Cursor finishes generating its response, the screen would automatically show the first sentence of that new response, allowing the user to immediately begin reading from the top.

Alternatively, or additionally, Cursor could provide an ↑ navigation button that jumps directly to the beginning of the current/latest AI response, similar to the existing ↓ button that makes it easy to jump to the bottom.

I believe this would be especially useful for users who work with Cursor on large projects and regularly receive long responses.

I am sending this suggestion because I enjoy using Cursor and would like to see the user experience continue improving. I believe that when users take the time to send suggestions for improvement, it is often because they want to keep using the product for a long time and want to help make it better.

Thank you for considering my suggestion.

8

It’s unbelievable how this has not yet been fixed. It’s simple to do and it’s wasting a lot of people’s time. Almost every single chat request forces me to scroll back and find the top. I’d say about 100 times per day, and each time it takes 5-10 seconds and breaks the flow. If I’m working on a couple of things at the same time in multiple chats it becomes even more annoying since you can no longer tell the difference between a chat & reply that you have already read and one that you haven’t, because they are all at the bottom. A couple of options are possible:

  • Option to set auto scroll on/off
  • Keyboard shortcut to move up one message, with your chat request being at the top
  • Button to go up one request / scroll to start of answer. Even this forum and the page I’m typing this in has it.
  • Color coding on the scrollbar when scrolling a chat, with your requests being a box/colored line.. The code scrollbar already has something similar for the changes.
  • Replies being indented from your requests. This make it easier to see when each request starts