The desktop app issues on Windows — page 3
Issues the maintainers labelled both platform:windows and area:desktop.
2,281 issues · 916 open · 1,365 resolved (60%) · first seen Feb 9, 2026
Is this getting better or worse?
This class of problem is still growing. 1226 new reports in the last 90 days vs 797 in the 90 before — +54%. The open backlog peaked at 916 in 2026-10 and sits at 916 today.
Derived by counting each matching issue from its creation date until it closed. First-party
computation over the anthropics/claude-code tracker — the trend is not published
anywhere upstream.
Which builds report this
1,038 of these reports name the Claude Code build they were running, spanning 177 releases. Heaviest reporters:
- Claude Code v2.1.260
- Claude Code v2.1.246
- Claude Code v2.1.229
- Claude Code v2.1.247
- Claude Code v2.1.295
- Claude Code v2.1.209
- Claude Code v2.1.286
- Claude Code v2.1.237
Report volume, not a defect count: an issue can mention a build without that build having caused the failure. Versions come from the version string in the bug-report template, matched against real published tags.
Do these get fixed?
Median time to close is 35 days across 1,365 closures. Of the 1,365 closures with a recorded reason, 23% were closed as completed and 1,057 as not-planned or duplicate. The most recent completed fix landed in 2026-10.
Workarounds reported by the community
706 of these issues post a workaround someone says worked. The highest-engagement ones:
- [FEATURE] Add font size adjustment for Code tab in Claude Desktop
- …rl+- also do not work inside the Code tab. The only current workaround is to change the entire Windows display scaling, which affects all applications system-wide and is not a practical solution. Proposed Solution Please…
Found in the description of #48237 · resolved - Windows: app window is always-on-top with no way to disable it
- …earance toggle in the app - No documented keyboard shortcut Workaround Windows virtual desktops ( ), which works because "always on top" is per-desktop. Minimising the window also works but is not practical for frequent…
Found in the description of #89467 · resolved - [Feature Request] Native WSL Remote Integration for Claude Code Desktop on Windows
- …l: wrong shell, broken paths, toolchain mismatches. The SSH workaround is too clunky for daily use. VS Code's Remote - WSL solved this years ago. Claude Code Desktop deserves the same. This would unlock the Desktop UI fo…
Found in the thread of #49933 · resolved - [BUG] Claude Desktop fails to launch on Windows — orphaned Silo / Job Object after app crash, only logoff or reboot recovers (HRESULT 0x80070020 in AppModel-Runtime EventID 215/208)
- …doesn't propagate cleanup back through the Silo Only known workaround Logoff + Login (or full reboot). This clears the orphaned handle in the user-session. Service restarts and AppX package resets do not clean it up. Th…
Found in the description of #53247 · still open - Claude Desktop (Windows): provide a way to disable the bundled Cowork background service (CoworkVMService) for users who don't use Cowork
- …esktop is not an option for me — I use it daily. - The only workarounds are user-hostile : take ownership of and force , or schedule a task at logon. Both may break on package updates and feel wrong on a system level. Se…
Found in the description of #57371 · still open
Excerpts are quoted from the linked issue so you can judge relevance before opening it. Threads that only ask for a workaround, or report that there is none, are excluded. These are community suggestions, not official guidance from Anthropic — read the full thread before applying one.
Matching issues 201–300
Ranked by community engagement (reactions weighted over comments). Listing the top 300 of 2,281 matches; the statistics above cover all 2,281.
- [BUG] Claude Desktop "Code" tab: pre-existing CLI/VS Code sessions invisible — local_*.json index entries never created for them (reopen of #29331 with reverse-engineered schema + DIY fix proof)
- [BUG] Claude Desktop Windows 11 Cowork and Code tabs give this error always now: Claude Code process exited with code 3
- [BUG] Active session auto-archives within seconds of window focus loss (Windows)
- [BUG] Remote SSH session crashes immediately with exit code 1 on Max/OAuth accounts (ccd-cli 2.1.128)
- Sessions disappear from recent conversations on desktop app restart (Windows)
- Model picker selects Opus 4.7 1M when choosing Opus 4.7 (200k), possibly after compaction
- [BUG] Schedule entry missing from desktop sidebar (present on web)
- [BUG] 1.3036.0: Cowork sessions crash with "Claude Code process exited with code 1" on Windows 11 Home
- [BUG] Claude Desktop injects inference-only CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN that breaks /remote-control
- [BUG] UI "View diff / Commit changes" bar does not refresh after commits made via Bash tool
- [BUG] Desktop: Reply opens an inline popup without dictation
- Local MCP servers fail with 'Not ready after 60 seconds' even though the remote connection succeeds (shared-pool readiness bug)
- disableAutoUpdates also hides Help > Check for Updates, removing the manual update path
- No update policy that downloads an update and waits for the user to install it
- Archive/delete of Claude Code sessions is per-client — desktop's archive flag is invisible to the VS Code extension
- Sessions sidebar: option to limit sessions shown per project/folder group
- [BUG] Hidden Browser pane: screenshots time out 30s; preview_start no longer auto-opens the pane (regression; follow-up to #76649, NOT a dupe of #77670)
- [BUG] Browser pane read tools (screenshot/read_page) permanently blocked — "per-action approval" required but approval card never appears (Auto mode, allowlisted site)
- [BUG] Remote Control initialization fails for every new session - registerWorker HTTP 401 (reconnects still work), since mid-May
- [BUG] "Session history shows in sidebar but content is empty — desktop app (Windows)"
- [BUG] On Windows with English as the primary system language, spell check in Claude Code only checks the primary language (English).
- [Bug] Claude Desktop VM workspace startup failure: path mismatch between AppData\Roaming and AppData\Local
- [BUG] Live Artifacts (CoworkArtifacts.callMcpTool) reject local stdio MCP servers on cold start — claude.ai relay rejects server name as non-UUID
- [BUG] [Claude Code Desktop app on Windows] Periodic input lag caused by 88MB LocalStorage sync and 200ms+ IndexedDB callbacks blocking renderer main thread
- [Desktop App / Windows] Dragging panel headers moves entire app window instead of panels
- Missing the Unarchive function in Claude Code for for desktop
- [BUG] Claude Desktop: no way to set CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS, session tokens consumed on failed response
- [BUG] Desktop app (Windows + macOS): new chat session repo selector is locked to last interacted-with repo and is unresponsive — Android unaffected
- [BUG] Chat response completion notifications silent on desktop app (Windows + macOS) while Code/Cowork notifications fire correctly
- Desktop app: file links outside the working directory render clickable but dead-end in 'Couldn't find this file'
- Desktop app: no way to restore the git/branch bar after dismissing it with the X button
- Claude Desktop: mouse cursor disappears when the folder access permission dialog opens
- [BUG] Connected folders never mount inside VM — host reports Plan9 share added successfully, guest sees none
- SendMessage/ListAgents cross-session peer messaging broken after CCD 2.1.258 -> 2.1.260 update (Windows desktop app)
- [BUG] Windows: CoworkVMService can never arm its own recovery actions ("Access is denied" at every start) — service death becomes a silent claude.exe hang with no crash dump (root cause of #59794 and #66849, both closed stale)
- [BUG] The browser pane `computer { action: "screenshot" }` tool consistently times out after 30s with:
- Desktop App: Allow choosing working directory before first message
- [BUG] Windows Desktop app: Read tool PDF fails with 'pdftoppm is not installed' while poppler is installed, on PATH, and resolvable by the same session's shells
- [BUG] SSH remote: message exceeding server line buffer wedges connection in infinite reconnect loop (token too long + stdin replay poison pill)
- [BUG] Session visible in UI but "Session not found on disk" — JSONL file exists but has mismatched internal session ID
- Keybinding: cannot override default 'enter → chat:submit' with user bindings
- [BUG] Desktop App Prompt Preview Overlay covers large portions of the output screen degrading UX and making it hard to read output.
- [Bug] Desktop: text input freezes after long session — ProseMirror placeholder/cursor disappears
- [BUG] Cowork: skill upload truncates files >99 KB and leaves null-byte tail on re-upload
- Cowork fails to start workspace on Windows 11 Pro — “Request timed out: configure”
- [BUG] Send button (submit icon) missing from input field in Desktop app (Windows)
- [BUG] After updating to 2.37337.1, most of my projects disappeared from the Code tab sidebar. The sessions are all still there, but they're dumped into one "Default" pile instead of grouped by project.
- [FEATURE] Desktop app: option to stop chat auto-scroll while I'm reading
- [BUG] Code tab terminal integration fails on Windows (MSIX install)
- [BUG] Windows Desktop: device bridge handshake never acknowledged for ~18 min (connect frame sent → handshake timeout), survives reboot + app update, then self-recovers
- [BUG] Regression of #86362 — Browser pane still blocks same-origin subresources (ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT) for hostnames resolving to 127.0.0.1
- Gmail connector can't attach local files without sending base64 through the tool call
- Desktop app spawns ~17 git processes per second continuously (Windows), amplifying a kernel pool leak into ~6 GB/day
- Session stuck showing "Can't reach your computer" when resuming existing conversation, while new conversations connect fine
- [BUG] Windows icon renders as wrong/blurry variant at DPI scaling >100%
- [BUG] ListAgents / SendMessage missing from tool registry in Desktop scheduled-task and Remote Control sessions (bisected to Desktop 1.44121.4 -> 1.46388.1)
- [BUG] Cowork "RPC pipe closed" on Windows when app is installed on non-C: drive - signature verification requires C:\Program Files\WindowsApps, workspace reinstall fails at ~80%
- [BUG] Desktop app: turns triggered by cross-session messages hang at 0 tokens (manual prompts work)
- [BUG] Windows desktop app main process does ~95,000 file ops/sec → kernel non-paged pool leak (~14 GB/hr) → full system freeze. Regression in 1.11847.5
- [BUG] Chat tab disappears when switching from Anthropic login to third-party API gateway
- Folder Renaming
- [BUG] Claude Code win desktop app - Code fence input box drops pasted lines with CRLF line endings (Windows regression in v1.6259.1)
- [BUG] "Copy message" copies empty string to clipboard on Windows 11 Desktop App
- [BUG] User-input markdown autolinker treats `.md`/`.rs` filename extensions as TLDs, mangles `<word>_<filename>.md` references in chat
- [BUG] Cowork tab not showing on Windows 11 Pro x64 — tab completely absent from navigation
- [BUG] Permission prompt defaults to "Always allow" instead of "Allow once" - dangerous UX regression
- Claude Desktop (Electron) causes NTFS NonPaged Pool kernel memory leak on Windows (~0.5GB/min)
- [BUG] CoworkVMService crashes when external/USB drive cannot be mounted as Plan9 share (v1.569.0.0)
- [BUG] User messages disappear from chat history after assistant response is rendered
- [FEATURE] Allow explicit SSH binary path configuration on Windows
- [BUG] Native desktop app (ARM64 Windows) crashes exclusively during tool use — corrupted ANSI codes at tool-call boundaries
- Desktop app: context usage now takes up to 3 clicks to see (session donut switched to weekly usage, context moved to Session Rail)
- [BUG] Desktop app (Windows): prompt suggestions no longer appear after update; composer always shows "Enter to send, Ctrl+Enter to queue"
- [BUG] Desktop Code tab: context window bar missing from usage popover (all sessions)
- [BUG] Windows desktop: Remote Control not restored after app relaunch (silent update / restart), sessions show as archived on mobile
- [BUG] Cowork (Windows): "Upgrade projects" forces archiving of local-folder projects — no way to upgrade them, and new project creation is blocked until they are archived
- [BUG] Windows Desktop: linked computer stuck on "Asleep or app closed", cloud sessions and cloud scheduled tasks fail with "not connected to the bridge" (survives reboot, re-login, device removal, app update)
- Scheduled tasks silently skip their fire window, with host machine and scheduler engine both demonstrably active
- Windows: Claude desktop app window intermittently gets stuck as always-on-top (WS_EX_TOPMOST)
- [BUG] Account-synced plugins cannot be removed: they reappear after removal from the desktop app AND claude.ai, and are invisible to the CLI
- [BUG] Desktop app: OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES from project .claude/settings.json is never emitted (CLI on the same folder emits it)
- [BUG] Remote Control fails with HTTP 403 after Desktop app update; /remote-control retry does not recover
- [BUG] Artifacts viewer window: View > Zoom In/Out and Ctrl+/Ctrl- zoom the main Claude Code window instead of the artifact
- Local-only sessions are auto-registered with cloud Remote Control, so a dead local process reports as computer_unreachable
- [BUG] Windows MSIX auto-update terminates running app — "Another program is currently using this file"
- [BUG] Windows Desktop app 1.37937 (2026-08-25 update): slash autocomplete blank, then first-position-only / single-command, chip styling gone
- MCP-originated cross-session sends (`ccd_session_mgmt send_message`) never deliver — payload lost in app layer; receiving session UI hangs on "phantom" turn
- Desktop Browser pane: allow user-approved local hostnames (hosts-file aliases) as trusted preview origins — currently all subresources blocked with ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT
- [BUG] Claude Desktop on Windows loops on "A new version of Claude is available" with error 1XAF0WC after update
- [BUG] Claude Desktop — recurring silent GPU-process crash kills entire app during web research (4-5×/day), no recovery, no crash dump
- [BUG] Cowork broken since Chat/Cowork merge rollout 8–9 July: projects disappear within 24h (ongoing data loss) and connector tools never reach Cowork sessions (Windows 11, Desktop 1.20186.0)
- Claude Desktop (Windows): `</> Code` conversation history silently lost on restart — and Claude doesn't detect the gap
- Claude Desktop Code tab ignores NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS on Windows MSIX install behind corporate SSL proxy
- [BUG] Desktop (Windows): Pinned sidebar sessions stop reordering by recent activity after update (v1.14271.0)
- [BUG] Cowork local-agent-mode sessions missing from Recents despite intact data on disk (Windows)
- [BUG] Desktop app fails to display/index sessions migrated from another machine (works fine in CLI)
- [BUG] Desktop app Cloudflare Turnstile 403 loop on Windows 11
- [Bug] OTel not initializing on Windows Desktop despite correct remote-settings.json cache
- [BUG] Dispatch permanently shows "Can't reach your desktop" — needs server-side pairing reset
- MCP tool-result widgets render as empty boxes (Claude Code Desktop)