[BUG] Claude Desktop (Linux/KDE) window cannot be minimized — app main process restores it instantly

Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 30, 2026

Environment

  • Claude Desktop 1.40609.0 (Electron 42.10.0), official Linux build
  • Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS, KDE Plasma 5.27.12, X11 session (kwin_x11)

Description
The Claude Desktop window cannot be minimized (iconified). Any attempt to minimize it — the app's own titlebar minimize button, the taskbar, or even asking KWin directly — appears to do nothing: the window stays (or instantly returns) on screen. Maximize works fine. Every other window on the desktop minimizes normally.

What I found while debugging
The window manager does minimize the window, but the app's main process un-minimizes it in under a second:

  1. KWin reports the window as perfectly minimizable (_NET_WM_ACTION_MINIMIZE present, minimizable=true in KWin scripting).
  2. Minimizing via KWin scripting (client.minimized = true over DBus) succeeds — KWin confirms minimized=true — but WM_STATE is back to Normal in <1 s. Reproduced with the app fully idle (no streaming, no user input for 20+ s).
  3. Smoking gun: with the Electron main process frozen (kill -STOP <pid>), the window minimizes and stays Iconic indefinitely:

``
t+1: window state: Iconic
...
t+6: window state: Iconic
== SIGCONT sent ==
window state: Normal (restored by the app within ~1–2 s)
``

So the restore is performed by app code in the main process, not by the WM or the user.

Incidental observation: ~/.config/Claude/logs/main.log logs Failed to set title bar overlay, this is probably expected at the exact moment of each minimize (harmless — setTitleBarOverlay is Windows-only — but it timestamps the app reacting to the minimize event).

Steps to reproduce

  1. Launch Claude Desktop on Linux (KDE/X11).
  2. Click the minimize button in the window titlebar, or minimize from the taskbar.
  3. The window never leaves the screen (it is minimized and immediately restored).

Expected behavior
The window minimizes and stays minimized until the user restores it.

Workaround
Closing the window (X) hides it to the system tray, which works fine.

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