Change Cursor's Sidebar Position to Match VSCode's Style

Introduction

Cursor's default sidebar is hard to use. I don't know why they put the navigation icons at the top—it feels like a pointless change made just to differentiate from VSCode.

Criticizing Cursor

Putting the navigation icons in a horizontal row at the top has several problems:

• You can't click an icon to quickly collapse the sidebar; after collapsing, the sidebar disappears completely
• Only 4 icons can be shown at a time; extra icons can't be displayed (e.g. Remote, Grok Build, and other extensions)

Take a look at the result after the change—the difference is obvious. The familiar muscle memory from using VSCode is back.

How to Change It

It's simple—just add this line to the config file:

"workbench.activityBar.orientation": "vertical"

After that you'll be prompted to restart Cursor; once you restart, you're done.