What it does
Ordinary autocomplete guesses the rest of the identifier under your cursor. Cursor Tab predicts the whole change: it reads the edits you just made, infers what the next one should be, and offers a diff that can span several lines or jump to a different part of the file. Accepting it is one keystroke.
Because the suggestion is a diff rather than an insertion, Tab can delete and rewrite as well as add. Renaming a variable on line 10 and hitting Tab will often walk you through the remaining references. When the next logical edit is somewhere else, the suggestion appears as a jump target and pressing Tab moves the cursor there first.
Tab runs on a dedicated fast model rather than the one selected in the Agent picker, so changing your Agent model does not change Tab behaviour or cost.
Using it
- Accept or dismiss. Press Tab to accept the suggested diff, Esc to dismiss it. Partial acceptance works with the word-by-word shortcut shown in the suggestion overlay.
- Follow a jump. When the prediction points at another location, the first Tab press moves the cursor and the second applies the edit.
- Turn it off where it gets in the way. The Tab toggle lives in Cursor Settings under Tab. It can be disabled globally or for specific languages when you want a quiet buffer, such as Markdown or plain text.
Worth knowing
- Tab suggestions are generated from the open file and recent edits, so a cold file right after opening gives weaker predictions than one you have been working in.
- Tab usage is not drawn from the Agent request allowance shown on the usage dashboard.
Checked against Tab in the Cursor help centre on 25 September 2026.