Desktop app: local file links never open in a Code session that was started from the phone via Remote Control
Environment: macOS 27.0, Claude desktop app 2.2553.1, Claude Code 2.1.270 (claude remote-control server, cwd $HOME), Claude iOS app.
What happens
In a Code session that was created from the iOS app through Remote Control, clicking a local file link in Claude's reply (for example /Users/<me>/notes/foo.md) in the desktop app shows "Couldn't read this file" / "outside the working directory". The file exists and sits directly inside the session's recorded cwd.
The same path, clicked in a session created in the desktop app on the same Mac, opens normally.
Reproducible: every session created remotely (iPhone, or claude.ai/code from another machine) shows it. No session created locally has shown it. The path form doesn't matter: absolute, symlinked, %20-encoded and non-iCloud paths all open in local sessions, and in one remotely created session 9 of 9 clicks failed while the identical path opened in a concurrent local session.
Measured in a failing session
| | |
|---|---|
| remote-control server cwd | /Users/<me> |
| failing session's recorded cwd | /Users/<me> |
| refused file | /Users/<me>/…/foo.md, exists |
So the backend cwd is correct. The file panel appears to check against a folder that the desktop app only attaches when a user picks a folder to start a session. Sessions spawned by remote-control never go through that step, so no folder is attached and every local link is refused. There is also no UI to attach a folder to an existing session.
Expected: links inside the session's cwd open, however the session was started.
Workaround: start the session in the desktop app, then turn on Remote Control for it and drive it from the phone.