What is the .cursor folder on your Mac, and is it safe to delete?
~/.cursor~/.cursor is the Cursor editor's home folder: your installed extensions, caches, and bits of editor state. You can delete it, but treat that as a reset, not a free cleanup. Caches rebuild on their own, while extensions need reinstalling and some settings may need to be set up again. If you only want the space back, trim the extensions folder instead of trashing the whole thing.
What it is
~/.cursor is a hidden folder at the top of your home directory, created the first time you run Cursor, the AI code editor built on VS Code. It plays the same role ~/.vscode plays for VS Code: the extensions subfolder holds every extension you've installed, and the rest is small state, things like argv.json and data for the command-line launcher. If you've never installed Cursor, something else created a folder with that name, and you should figure out what owns it before touching it.
Nearly all of the size sits in ~/.cursor/extensions. Extensions look tiny in the marketplace, but many bundle full language servers, linters, and platform binaries, so a single language extension can run into hundreds of megabytes. Updates make it worse: a new version lands in its own folder and the old one can linger right next to it. A light setup stays under a few hundred megabytes, while a heavy one with lots of language tooling can pass a couple of gigabytes. One thing this folder is not: Cursor's biggest data store. Chat history, workspace state, and the app's caches live in ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor, which is often the larger of the two.
Is it safe to delete?
Deleting ~/.cursor won't touch your code, your projects, or your Cursor account. The caches inside rebuild on their own the next time Cursor launches. The catch is everything else in there: trash the whole folder and every extension is gone, so you'll reinstall them one by one, and some settings may need re-setup afterward. That's why this folder rates a caution rather than a clean yes.
The smarter move is to clean inside it. Uninstall extensions you don't use from Cursor's own Extensions view, then clear leftover old versions out of ~/.cursor/extensions. You get most of the space back with none of the re-setup. Diskmack identifies Cursor's data folders automatically and cleans them the safe way, moving files to the Trash instead of deleting them in place. Whatever route you take, quit Cursor first so nothing gets written back mid-cleanup.
How to check its size
In Finder: In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (or press Cmd-Shift-G), paste ~/.cursor, and press Return. Select the folder and press Cmd-I to see its size. Repeat with ~/.cursor/extensions; it will account for almost all of the total.
In Terminal:
du -sh ~/.cursor ~/.cursor/extensionsHow to clean it
- Open Cursor and press Cmd-Shift-X to open the Extensions view. Uninstall anything you no longer use; each uninstall removes its folder from disk.
- Quit Cursor completely (Cmd-Q) so it isn't writing to the folder while you work.
- In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder, paste ~/.cursor/extensions, and press Return.
- Look for duplicate folders that differ only by version number, like publisher.extension-1.2.0 sitting next to publisher.extension-1.3.1. Drag the older versions to the Trash.
- For a full reset, drag the entire ~/.cursor folder to the Trash instead. Cursor recreates it on the next launch, but you will reinstall your extensions and redo some setup.
- Relaunch Cursor, confirm it works and your extensions are in order, then empty the Trash.
A .cursor folder inside a project is a different thing. It holds rules you wrote for Cursor's AI, it's tiny, and deleting it loses that work.
Will it come back?
Yes, gradually. Cursor recreates ~/.cursor on its next launch, the caches rebuild without any help from you, and the extensions folder grows back as you reinstall extensions and as they update over time. How fast depends on how many extensions you run: a minimal setup stays small for months, while a kitchen-sink install of language packs climbs back toward its old size within a few update cycles. Deleting the folder buys space once. Keeping the extension list short is what keeps it small.
Common questions
Is the .cursor folder inside my project the same as ~/.cursor?
No. A project-level .cursor folder holds rules and instructions you or your team wrote for Cursor's AI features. It's usually a few kilobytes, it's your work, and deleting it deletes that work. The space problem, when there is one, is the hidden ~/.cursor in your home folder.
Will deleting ~/.cursor erase my chat history or sign me out?
No. Chats, login state, and your main user settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor, not in ~/.cursor. You'll lose installed extensions and may need to set some things up again, like extension configuration and the command-line launcher, but your conversations survive.
Why is ~/.cursor over a gigabyte when I barely use Cursor?
Extensions. Language extensions bundle full language servers and platform binaries, and old versions can stick around after updates. Sort ~/.cursor/extensions by size in Finder and the culprits are usually two or three heavyweight extensions, sometimes present in multiple versions.
~/.cursor is small. Where else does Cursor store data?
Check ~/Library/Application Support/Cursor, which holds workspace storage, caches, and chat data, and is often several times larger than ~/.cursor. Run du -sh on both paths to see which one deserves your attention first.