Input box completely unresponsive when Claude is idle (Windows 11 / PowerShell)
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Workaround ✓ Mentioned in description ↑
Activity 4 comments · opened Jun 15, 2026 · closed Jun 15, 2026
Description
The text input becomes completely unresponsive while Claude is visibly idle (no spinner, no active tool calls). Keypresses are silently ignored — nothing appears in the input box.
Steps to Reproduce
- Run
claudein a PowerShell terminal on Windows 11 - Have a normal conversation / complete one or more turns
- At some point while Claude is idle and awaiting input, the input box stops accepting keystrokes
Expected Behavior
Input should always be accepted when Claude is idle and awaiting a prompt.
Actual Behavior
- Claude appears idle (no spinner, no visible activity)
- Typing produces no characters in the input box
- Pressing Escape does not help
- Clicking directly in the terminal input area does not help
- Alt+Tab away and back does not help
- The only recovery is fully closing and reopening Claude Code
Workaround
Press Ctrl+C twice to exit, then relaunch with claude.
Environment
- OS: Windows 11 Home (10.0.26200)
- Shell: PowerShell (pwsh)
- Terminal: Windows Terminal
- Frequency: Occurred twice in a single session
- No custom hooks configured in settings.json
Additional Notes
No hooks are configured that could block input. Issue appears to be an application-level freeze of the readline/input interface rather than a Windows focus problem.
4 Comments
Additional note from reporter: Ctrl+C twice does not always recover the session. In a follow-up occurrence, the only fix was force-killing the claude process from another terminal window (Stop-Process -Force on Windows). The frozen process showed high CPU time but the input remained completely unresponsive.
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Closing as duplicate of #12234 which matches this issue most closely.
This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.