White side buttons in light mode

[Sepezha]

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

White side buttons are pretty much indistinguishable on a light background in light mode

Steps to Reproduce

Use Cursor Light, or other light theme

Expected Behavior

Side buttons should have contrast against the background

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.41 (user setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 2ca326e0d1ce10956aea33d54c0e2d8c13c58a30
Date: 2026-01-16T19:14:00.150Z
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 10.0.26100

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

[Colin]

Hey @Sepezha!

I use Cursor Light, and the icons appear as you would expect.

Do you have any custom theming settings? Try checking Preferences: Open Settings (JSON) from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and check:

• workbench.colorTheme
• workbench.iconTheme
• Any other relevant settings about accessibility or contrast

As a test, it could be a good idea to switch workbench.colorTheme to a few other values. The icon colors should change with the theme. Do they?

[Sepezha]

I have "titleBar.activeForeground": "#fff" in this workspace. When I disable it the icons go back to normal.

However it wasn’t like that in the previous versions of Cursor, these icons were not affected by this setting. And I think they shouldn’t be, because they’re not in the title bar

[Colin]

Thanks for following up, @Sepezha!

I just tried it out and can confirm that before version 2.2.21, these icons aren’t affected by the setting.

I’m not sure this is a bug so much as a design choice. Do you have an opinion on this? In what cases would you want the menu icons to be a different color than the title bar? Is it purely aesthetic?

[Sepezha]

I often have multiple projects opened and I use different title bar colors to better differentiate between them.

For darker background colors I use white foreground.

My opinion on this that these icons are not on the title bar, so the titleBar.activeForeground and similar settings should not affect these icons. Otherwise their background should match the title bar background (which is not good)

[Colin]

Yeah, I agree with your logic here. I’ll file an issue!

[Colin]

Hey @Sepezha!

I can’t reproduce this any longer in 2.5. Let me know if you can!

[Sepezha]

It’s still the same for me unfortunately on 2.5.20

[Colin]

Ah, you’re right. I was simply doing it wrong.

Thanks! Will reopen the ticket we had opened.