Cursor stuck on "Waiting for extension host"? Extensions dead, AI panel spinning, Git features gone? Work through this list top to bottom. The first step fixes most cases in under a minute.
Open the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P, or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and run Developer: Restart Extension Host. This kills and relaunches the host process without closing your files. Transient startup failures clear here.
Quit Cursor and relaunch from a terminal with cursor --disable-extensions. If the hang is gone, one extension is the culprit. Re-enable in batches until the hang returns, then leave that one disabled and check for an update.
Cursor keeps session state in a SQLite file. A corrupt entry blocks the host from :
%APPDATA%\Cursor\User\globalStorage\state.vscdb
~/Library/Application Support/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb
~/.config/Cursor/User/globalStorage/state.vscdb
Delete or rename it and restart. You will need to sign back in.
Update to the latest version first. After that, the repeat offenders are aggressive indexing on huge folders, WSL or Remote-SSH mounts that went stale, and antivirus holding the host process open.
Full guide with the WSL-specific path and prevention steps: https://automatelab.tech/blog/ai-coding/cursor-waiting-extension-host-fix/