[BUG] Claude Desktop fails to launch when ~/Documents is a Dropbox symlink (macOS)

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

New install of Claude Desktop on Mac failed on Launch. This was the fix. Symbolic link was getting in the way.

macOS version (26.3 / Tahoe)
Mac architecture (M1 / arm64)
Claude Desktop version (1.1.4498)
The key log error: Failed to get 'documents' path
That the fix was sudo unlink ~/Documents && mkdir ~/Documents

Might be worth reporting this to Anthropic as a bug though — Claude Desktop should handle symlinked home directories gracefully rather than crashing on launch. You can use the feedback button on claude.ai to flag it.

lrwx------+ Documents -> /Users/<user>/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/My Mac (<hostname>)/Documents
Claude Desktop's Electron app cannot resolve this symlinked path at startup, causing a fatal crash before the window renders.
Workaround:
bashsudo unlink ~/Documents
mkdir ~/Documents
Expected behavior: Claude Desktop should handle symlinked standard directories gracefully, or provide a meaningful error rather than a generic "failed to launch" dialog.

What Should Happen?

Expected behavior: Claude Desktop should handle symlinked standard directories gracefully, or provide a meaningful error rather than a generic "failed to launch" dialog.

Error Messages/Logs

Every launch attempt fails with the following errors in ~/Library/Logs/Claude/main.log:
[error] Sentry caught: {
  type: 'Error',
  value: "Failed to get 'documents' path",
  stack: "Error: Failed to get 'documents' path\n
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Applications/Claude.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/.vite/build/index.js:1290:2432)\n
    ..."
}
[error] Sentry caught: {
  type: 'ReferenceError',
  value: "Cannot access 'pUt' before initialization"
}

Steps to Reproduce

Launching Claude desktop with documents in a symbolic link to dropbox

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

1.1.4498

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

_No response_