anthropics / anthropics/claude-code
[BUG] Claude Desktop crashes under memory pressure during heavy Claude-in-Chrome browser automation (Windows)
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 145k
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Description
## Description
Claude Desktop crashed on Windows 11 during a heavy browser-automation session (Claude in Chrome MCP tools driving many sequential `computer`/screenshot calls against Upwork). No graceful shutdown was logged. This has happened more than once under similar conditions.
## Environment
- OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
- Total system RAM: 15.3 GB
- Free RAM at time of crash (from the app's own periodic memory log): declining steadily from ~2.8 GB to ~2.1 GB free over a few minutes, then the log stops mid-session
- Claude Desktop's own process tree was using ~4.3 GB RSS in a separate, freshly-started instance shortly after (the `electron_renderer` process alone was ~1.8 GB), suggesting the app is a significant contributor to memory pressure on lower-RAM machines
## What I found in the logs
`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude\Logs\main1.log` (the rolled-over previous-session log) ends abruptly at `2026-08-30 05:51:20` with no shutdown/exit log line — consistent with the process being killed (e.g. by the OS under memory pressure) rather than exiting cleanly.
In the ~2 minutes before the log cuts off, there are two warnings:
```
[warn] [claude-in-chrome] Tool call error: computer (24de56a6) after 30334ms
[warn] [claude-in-chrome] Tool call error: computer (756d8e23) after 30335ms
```
i.e. `computer` tool calls (screenshots) were timing out at ~30s right before the crash — this matches CDP `Page.captureScreenshot` timeouts I was independently seeing during a similar heavy-automation session.
`%APPDATA%\Claude\Crashpad\reports` is empty — no crash dump was captured, which points toward a hard OS-level kill (e.g. OOM) rather than an in-process exception Crashpad could catch.
## Steps to reproduce (best guess)
1. Run a long Claude Desktop session with Claude-in-Chrome doing sustained browser automation (many sequential screenshot/computer tool calls) against a real, complex webpage (in my case, Upwork search/job pages).
2. Leave other memory-hungry apps running concurrently (Docker, IDE, multiple browser tabs).
3. On a machine with ~15 GB total RAM, free memory drops toward ~2 GB.
4. App becomes unresponsive to `computer` tool calls (30s timeouts) and is then killed/crashes with no graceful shutdown and no crash dump captured.
## Expected behavior
Either the app should handle memory pressure more gracefully (release renderer memory, degrade instead of crashing), or at minimum a crash dump should be captured in Crashpad so the failure is diagnosable, and/or a clear warning should surface before tool calls start silently timing out and the app dies.
## Additional notes
I wasn't able to determine the exact installed app version from the local install directory in this session, so I'm not including one — happy to provide it if pointed at where it's recorded on disk.
Contributor guide
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Research direction
Start by reproducing the sustained Claude-in-Chrome automation described, while monitoring free RAM and the app process tree. Inspect %LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude\Logs\main1.log around the 30-second computer-tool timeouts and check %APPDATA%\Claude\Crashpad\reports for diagnostic evidence. Done means the failure mode is confirmed and the app either avoids the crash or records enough information to diagnose it.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Domain
- desktop, performance
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100