Why this shape makes sense
Every previous attempt at coding on a phone has foundered on the same problem: a thirteen-centimetre screen and a soft keyboard are terrible for writing code and merely adequate for reading it. Cursor sidesteps that by not putting the editor on the phone at all.
What moves to mobile is the part that was always a supervision task. Starting a run, watching a transcript, reading a diff, approving or rejecting, asking for one more change. None of that needs a keyboard, and all of it fits the moments when a phone is the device you have.
It is the same agent, not a lesser one
This is the detail that separates it from a companion app. Runs happen on actual development machines, which means an agent can install dependencies, execute the test suite and verify its own change before telling you it is done. Every model available to cloud agents can be selected, and each run gets that model's maximum supported context window rather than a reduced one.
Because the app shares a backend with the web interface and the desktop Agents Window, an agent started on the train appears in the desktop window when you get to a desk. There is no export step and no second inbox.
The iPad version is not the phone version
Larger screens get a layout that uses them. Chats sit in a sidebar so you can follow several agents at once, a review opens beside a chat instead of replacing it, and file diffs render at full width. Attaching a screenshot and drawing on it with an Apple Pencil is a genuinely good way to communicate a front-end change, and it is faster than describing the same thing in prose.
What stays on the web, and why
Cursor draws the line at configuration. Anything that sets up the environment an agent runs in lives on the web; anything that directs an agent within an existing environment works on mobile.
That is a defensible split rather than an arbitrary one. Choosing which MCP servers a single run should use is a per-task decision and works on the phone. Adding a new MCP server, rotating a secret, or reconnecting a GitHub installation are configuration changes with blast radius, and doing them on a phone while distracted is how people break their own setup.
Offline behaviour
The app is cache-first: it reads from local data so the inbox and conversations open immediately, then syncs when the connection returns. On a commute that is the difference between a usable app and a spinner.
Capabilities read from the Cursor for iOS documentation on 25 September 2026.