[Desktop] Bring back the animated Claude spark as the "working" indicator (or make it configurable)
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 3 comments · opened Sep 29, 2026
In a recent Claude Desktop update (Code tab), the animated orange Claude spark / "blob" that showed while Claude was working was replaced with a dot indicator. It's 4 dots in a square while running a tool (e.g. Running python3 35s) and 3 dots in a row while searching the web.
Why the old one was better:
- It was instantly recognizable as Claude working, not a generic loading state.
- One consistent shape. The new indicator changes form (3 vs 4 dots), which reads like two different states, and it's unclear what the difference means.
- Honestly, it just felt friendlier. The spark had personality; the dots look like every other app's spinner.
Request:
- Bring back the spark animation as the default, or
- Add a setting to choose the working indicator (spark / dots), and
- If 3 dots and 4 dots mean different things, document it somewhere.
Small thing, but you look at it all day. Please give us back the blob 🧡
Environment: Claude Desktop (macOS), Code tab, September 2026.
3 Comments
+1, I noticed the same thing and filed #99139 before finding this one. It has real screenshots plus GIFs of the old spark and the new mark, rendered from the app's own sprites, in case that helps the team.
Some things I found in the app bundle (Claude Desktop 2.19675.0, macOS) that might answer your question 3:
nodeMarkAnimations→nodes3/nodes4). The spark shrinks to a dot, then turns into a rotating 3- or 4-node graph. At 20px the lines between the nodes are invisible, so it just reads as loose dots.turnStatusActivityMarksflag. Bringing it back, or exposing it as a setting, shouldn't be a big change.Let's hope they give us back the blob 🧡
+1 from another macOS Desktop (Code tab) user — strongly agree with all three points, especially the personality one. The bouncing orange spark was the one part of waiting for a reply that actually felt like Claude; the dots are indistinguishable from every other assistant's loading state.
One extra data point for your "inconsistent shapes" observation: after today's update we're seeing at least three different dot arrangements, not two —
5s),None of them are documented, and the shape changes read as meaningful state changes when (as far as we can tell) they aren't — which is worse than a single generic spinner, and much worse than the spark.
Seconding the request exactly as filed: restore the spark as the default, or add an appearance setting for the working indicator (spark / dots). It's a small thing, but it's the thing you stare at hundreds of times a day.
+1 Bring back the fuzzball!