In Cursor 2.0, when using the browser feature with Agent, I see two options:
Browser Tab (embedded)
Google Chrome
The changelog mentions that “Browser can now be embedded in-editor, including powerful new tools to select elements and forward DOM information to the agent.”
Questions:
What’s the practical difference between these two options?
Which is recommended for typical web development workflows?
When would I choose one over the other?
Does the embedded Browser Tab have full functionality or are there limitations compared to external Chrome?
I’m doing web development and want to understand the best practice for testing and debugging with the agent. Any guidance would be appreciated!
“Google Chrome” opens a new, entirely separate chrome browser window.
“Browser tab (embedded)” opens a tab directly in the cursor editor with simple browser-like functionality.
You probably won’t encounter any difference in agent functionality (i.e. browser control tools), page display, or javascript running between the two. Cursor is built on top of the Electron framework, which uses the same browser engine (Chromium) as google chrome behind the scenes. I expect they probably implemented embedded tabs using some Electron built-in functionality like WebContentsView, so the web behavior should be essentially identical to Chrome itself.
Embedded tabs do come with an extra tool to manually click and add elements to your chat context, which is cool. If that’s something you find useful, maybe consider using embedded tabs for your dev workflow. This should really be in the browser context documentation, but isn’t currently. See my screenshot:
Here are some of my personal thoughts/opinions on the topic. Not hard rules by any means, but maybe you’ll find something helpful here:
Chrome in a separate window is better for multi-monitor workflows. I like to have my code (Cursor) on my middle screen, and the web browser on my right so that I can edit and view the results of my changes at the same time.
That should technically be possible with cursor too, since cursor supports having multiple windows open for the same project. However, when I drag the embedded browser tab to another monitor, I’m hit with a bunch of rendering issues in the main editor. So I avoid doing that for now. I imagine it’ll be fixed at some point in the future.
Choose the embedded tab if you plan to use the manual element selection tool to add elements to your agent context. I don’t personally have much of a use case for this since I still deal with most code directly. However, I could totally see this being a great way for a less technical user (project manager?) to make minor changes to a webpage in real time.
Here’s my decision-making tldr:
On a single screen (laptop?), and don’t mind the browser window being a bit compact? Choose embedded tabs.
On multiple screens? Choose the standalone Chrome window.
Will a non-technical user be doing most of the work? Choose embedded tabs so they can stay within Cursor (to minimize mental context switching, and so they can just click to select elements they want to update).
Planning to use the “select element” tool to add elements to context? Choose embedded tabs.
Encountering issues with embedded tabs? Choose standalone Chrome.
Again, these are just my opinions. I don’t really use agents to test/debug web stuff, so it would be great if anyone with more experience doing so could provide some tips. Also, if anyone working at Cursor could weigh in with more info on known/potential limitations between the two modes, that would be much appreciated!
