Cursor deleted everything — how do I restore my project?
Cursor's built-in checkpoints come first. Then OS recovery. Then a folder-level safety net for next time.
Updated June 13, 2026
Start inside Cursor before you touch anything else
Open the AI/Composer panel and look for the Restore Checkpoint control next to the message where things went wrong — that’s the fastest path back. If a single file looks wrong, click into it and press Cmd+Z while focused in the editor. If the file itself is missing, right-click it (or its parent folder) in the Explorer and open the Timeline view to see saved versions.
Don’t close Cursor, don’t restart your Mac, and don’t accept any new AI edit until you’ve checked these three places. Each one can be wiped by the next save.
1. Recover from inside Cursor
Cursor is built on top of VS Code, so two layers of history are sitting right there: Cursor’s own AI checkpoint, and the editor’s per-file local history. Try them in this order.
Restore Checkpoint in the AI panel
Every AI turn that touched files leaves a checkpoint in the chat/composer thread. Scroll back to the message before the destructive edit and use the Restore Checkpoint affordance on that message. This reverts files the AI changed in that turn. Read the confirmation carefully — it tells you which files will move.
Cmd+Z in the editor
If a file is open and the damage was a single recent edit, plain undo still works. Click into the editor area first (not the chat panel), then press Cmd+Z. Undo history is per-file and only lives as long as that file stays open in the current session.
The Timeline view
The underlying editor keeps a local history entry every time a file is saved. Right-click a file in the Explorer sidebar and open the Timeline view to see those entries and roll back to one. This is per-file, so it’s great for “this one file got mangled,” and not much help for “a whole folder disappeared.”
Your chat history
Cursor’s chat threads persist across sessions. Even if a checkpoint button is gone, the conversation that describes what was changed is usually still there — useful for reconstructing what happened and finding the right file paths to dig for.
2. Then check your Mac
If Cursor’s own history doesn’t bring the files back, move outward.
- Trash. Open Finder → Trash. Files moved (not shredded) by tools and scripts usually land here. Right-click → Put Back.
- Recent items. Finder’s File → Open Recent and the Recents sidebar can surface a file whose folder you can’t find anymore.
- Time Machine. If you have it enabled, enter Time Machine from the menu bar and step back to a snapshot from before the AI session. This is the only Mac-level option that recovers a whole folder cleanly.
- Cloud sync version history. If your project folder lived in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive, each of those keeps its own per-file version history on the web. Sign in and check there.
Why Cursor’s built-in history isn’t a full safety net
Cursor’s checkpoints and the Timeline view are excellent for what they cover: edits the AI made through the chat panel, and saves of files you had open. They’re scoped to the editor and organised per file. A few things slip through that scope:
- Whole-folder deletes and renames that happen in a single sweep.
- Changes made by commands the AI ran in the integrated terminal rather than through the file-editing tools.
- Files that were never opened in the editor, so no save history exists.
- Anything that happened after the editor crashed or the workspace was reopened on a different folder.
A folder-level safety net that sits outside the editor
CoworkRestore is a Mac menu-bar app that keeps a quiet running history of your project folder as a whole — independent of Cursor, independent of whichever AI tool is editing files. It snapshots when the folder settles, so a single AI turn that deletes ten files leaves a single save point you can roll back in one click.
Because the snapshots live outside the editor, they survive Cursor crashing, the workspace being closed, or the editor’s own history being cleared. You can also restore per file if you only want one thing back — the same flow we describe in Undo bad file changes from Claude Cowork.
What CoworkRestore can and cannot recover
Can: any change inside a folder you’ve added to CoworkRestore, from the moment you added it — including deletions, renames, and overwrites. Whole-snapshot or per-file restore, with an undo on the restore itself.
Cannot: files from before CoworkRestore was installed, files in a folder you hadn’t added yet, or changes made while a project was paused. It’s a safety net for AI work, not a replacement for Time Machine or a full Mac backup.
If nothing comes back
Stop writing to the disk. Avoid restarting. If the files were on an external or network drive, unmount it. Recovery tools that scan for deleted blocks work best when no new data has overwritten the space the old files used to occupy. Then, once you’re back on your feet, set up something — Time Machine, a cloud sync with version history, CoworkRestore — so the next AI session can’t put you here again.