"workbench.activityBar.location": "left" not working

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

The top icons can’t be moved to the left to have same VSCode layout.

Steps to Reproduce

1 Create a settings.json
2 Add this line: “workbench.activityBar.location”: “left”
3 Reload (or close and open the IDE)

It happens in Mac silicon

Expected Behavior

It should move the icons to the left

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

Screenshot 2026-03-03 at 09.42.24.png
Screenshot 2026-03-03 at 09.42.24.png540×162 6.21 KB

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.4.37
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 7b9c34466f5c119e93c3e654bb80fe9306b6cc70
Date: 2026-02-12T23:15:35.107Z (2 wks ago)
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 25.3.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

Hey, thanks for the report. There are two things here:

  1. Wrong settings key. workbench.activityBar.location controls where the Activity Bar itself sits (top/bottom/hidden), not whether it’s on the left or right. To move the sidebar to the left, you need a different key:
"workbench.activityBar.orientation": "vertical"
  1. Known persistence bug. Even with the right key, the setting might not stick after restarts. This is a known issue and the team is aware.

Let me know if that helps.