VsCode's variable line heights feature

Ideas Feature Requests
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1

VsCode recently added a feature, in 1.105.1 and later, where extensions can customize the height of individual lines in the editor, by adding a decorator with a lineHeight field. This opens a bunch of nifty cosmetic options for extension developers, making blank lines half height, sticking images in comments, and other things.

I want to use this feature in an extension I’m writing, but it appears to be… completely missing from Cursor? I’m rather sad to find it missing. Are there plans to add this back in?

I had an agent dig through git history and cursor changelogs. Its findings:

```
Variable line heights is missing from Cursor 3.3.30, despite product.json claiming vscodeVersion: 1.105.1.

Evidence:

  • Upstream lineHeights.ts appears in VSCode tag 1.100.0 and onward; tag 1.105.1 (Oct 2025) registers EditorOption.allowVariableLineHeights with default true.
  • Cursor’s bundled workbench.desktop.main.js (51 MB at …/out/vs/workbench/) contains no trace:
    • No path matching out-build/vs/editor/common/viewLayout/lineHeights.js (other sibling files in that directory — linesLayout.js, viewLayout.js, etc. — are present).
    • No occurrences of allowVariableLineHeights, LineHeightsManager, CustomLine, onDidChangeLineHeights, hasSpecialLineHeights, or any other identifier from upstream’s lineHeights module.
    • Other 1.105-era markers (inlineEdits, terminalChat, the chat-actions module set) do appear, so the bundle is genuinely from a 1.105-ish base — just with this one feature surgically removed (or never merged).
  • Cursor’s product.json shows vscodeVersion: 1.105.1, release date 2026-05-09, but the version marker is nominal — the actual merge is selective and this is empirical proof of that.

Cursor’s upstream-merge practice (what’s publicly knowable):

  • Cursor is closed-source: no published repo, no per-merge changelog, no public list of dropped or held-back features.
    • They publish a vscodeVersion field as their marker but it represents the target VSCode tag they’re tracking, not a guarantee that the merge is complete. As above, features can be silently absent.
  • Their public changelog at What's New in Cursor — Latest Updates & Release Notes focuses on Cursor-specific AI features and only occasionally calls out “rebased on VSCode X.Y” as a milestone. Drops aren’t enumerated.
  • Pace of upstream-merge is irregular. They appear to skip features that intersect with their custom editor logic (AI inline edits, custom view models, etc.) — and variable line heights touches exactly the view model and view layout that AI inline edits and Tab-suggestions reach into, which is the most plausible reason for the surgical removal.
  • No way to verify any of this beyond the bundle inspection; they don’t communicate it.
    ```
4

Hey, thanks for the detailed breakdown, it really helps.

Confirmed: allowVariableLineHeights and lineHeight on decorations really aren’t in the current build, even though vscodeVersion in product.json is marked as 1.105.1. Like you said, that version marker is the upstream target tag we rebase onto, not a guarantee that every feature is fully merged. Variable line heights overlap with our inline edits and Cursor Tab suggestions in the view layout, so this part was most likely intentionally deferred.

I’ll pass this report to the team so they can assess whether we can bring this API in. I can’t share an ETA yet, and I won’t promise it’ll be added, but I’ll log the request. If there’s an update, I’ll reply here.