[BUG] Claude Desktop (Linux): left-clicking the tray icon does nothing — window can only be shown via right-click > Show App

Status Closed — not planned
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 1 comment · opened Oct 1, 2026 · closed Oct 4, 2026

What's wrong

On Linux, left-clicking the Claude Desktop tray icon does nothing. The only way to bring the window back is right-click > Show App.

Every other app in the same tray (Dropbox, Blueman, Teams/WhatsApp wrappers, etc.) toggles its window visibility on left click, which is the convention users expect from a tray icon.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Start Claude Desktop on Linux and close the window (the app keeps running in the tray).
  2. Left-click the tray icon.

Expected

The main window is shown and focused (and ideally hidden again on a second click, i.e. left click toggles visibility).

Actual

Nothing happens. Right-click > Show App is required.

Notes

  • The desktop environment does deliver the click: the tray item is registered as a StatusNotifierItem with ItemIsMenu: false, so the panel calls Activate on left click instead of opening the menu. The app just doesn't react to it.
  • As far as I can tell the tray only gets a context menu (setContextMenu) and no click handler is attached to the Electron Tray on Linux. Adding a tray.on('click', ...) that shows/toggles the main window should be enough.

Environment

  • Claude Desktop 2.9939.4 (official claude-desktop .deb)
  • Linux Mint 22.3, Cinnamon 6.6.9, X11
  • Tray applets: xapp-status@cinnamon.org + systray@cinnamon.org

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