Terminal strobing/flickering after returning from session selection screen (Windows Terminal)
Resolved 💬 11 comments Opened May 19, 2026 by slysa1 Closed May 21, 2026
Environment
- Claude Code: 2.1.144
- Windows Terminal: 1.24.11321.0
- Shell: PowerShell 7.6.1
- OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
Steps to Reproduce
- Open Claude Code in Windows Terminal (PowerShell 7.6.1 profile in taskbar)
- Navigate to the session selection screen
- Click back into an active session where Claude is thinking (spinner visible)
- Observe strobing/flickering in the terminal
What Happens
After re-entering the session:
- Terminal strobes/flickers while Claude is thinking (spinner animation)
- Strobing also occurs on every key press while typing a new prompt
- When Claude finishes thinking, the strobing stops
- When a new prompt is submitted and Claude starts thinking again, strobing resumes
- Issue persists for the entire duration of that terminal session
- Workaround: Closing and reopening the terminal window clears the bad state
Expected Behavior
Terminal renders cleanly after re-entering a session, with no flickering during the thinking animation or while typing.
Notes
The key-press strobing suggests the terminal gets into a corrupted render state when re-entering a session, not just a spinner animation issue. The problem appears to be in how Claude Code restores terminal state on session resume. Every subsequent render operation (cursor movement, input echo, spinner frame) triggers a full redraw instead of an in-place update.
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