[BUG] Desktop: Selecting the working folder for a new session drops chat composer focus

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

In the Desktop app's Code tab, a session created with Ctrl+N opens with the chat composer focused, so typing can start immediately. Selecting the working folder for that new session breaks it: Once the folder selection closes, the composer is no longer focused. Keystrokes go nowhere, and getting back to the input needs a mouse click.

The inconsistency is the core of it. The app clearly intends the composer to be focused when a new session is ready to type in, and it does exactly that up until the folder is chosen. Choosing a folder leaves the session in the same ready state but with focus unset.

What Should Happen?

After the folder selection closes, focus returns to the composer, matching the state Ctrl+N already produces before the folder is picked.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Press Ctrl+N to create a new session. The composer is focused and accepts typing without a click.
2. Select a different working folder for that new session.
3. Type.

Expected: The text lands in the composer.
Actual: Nothing is focused, the text is discarded, and the composer needs a click.

Additional Information

This lands on almost every new session rather than occasionally, because of #90736: A new session inherits the global last-used folder rather than the folder of the session in focus, so the folder usually has to be corrected right after Ctrl+N. Each correction then costs the focus described here.

It compounds a third way. There is currently no keyboard route back to the composer at all — #89910 requests a focus-chat-input shortcut and is still open — so the recovery is necessarily the mouse. Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab (cycle sessions) does restore composer focus and works as a workaround, which also suggests the focus call needed here already exists in the app.

Related but distinct, listed for triage rather than as duplicates:

• #89910 — no shortcut exists to focus the composer at all. A missing affordance, versus focus being dropped by an action here.
• #90736 — which folder a new session starts in. The reason this path is hit so often.
• #80743 — Alt-tab loses focus of the message input, VS Code extension.
• #88317 — a new session created via keyboard shortcut traps focus in the webview panel.

Claude Code Version

2.1.247

Platform

Claude Code Desktop app (Code tab)

Operating System

Windows 11