Reported issues for Desktop Commander

Pod holds 24 of 181 problems reported by people outside the maintainer team. Issues filed by the project's own owners, members and collaborators are excluded entirely — a maintainer's release checklist is not a warning to a prospective user.

Back to Desktop Commander.

Most discussed

[Error] Failed to call tool get_file_info: TypeError: Cannot convert undefined or null to object

Hi, I'm having some issues with the latest version of Desktop-Commander when trying to read files from a directory. I've attached a screenshot. Disabling or enabling the antivirus doesn't fix the issue. Running the program as administrator doesn't help either.

Read the thread · 2025-07-23 · closed · external user · 28 comments

ACPCodex binary path mismatch causes npx fallback, EPIPE and initSession timeout

Environment:

Desktop Commander App: 1.8.3
DesktopCommanderMCP package: 0.2.41
Windows 11
CoworkVMService running as LocalSystem

Problem: Desktop Commander searches for codex-acp.exe at:

app.asar.unpacked/dist-ts/node_modules/@zed-industries/...

but the binary is actually installed at:

app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@zed-industries/...

As a result:

ACPCodex binary is reported as missing
DC falls back to npx
npx starts under C:\Windows\SysWOW64
child process imme

Read the thread · 2026-05-14 · closed · external user · 15 comments

Errors on startup on mac

When launching on my mac, get json parse errors and logs like this:

2025-03-20T13:41:55.908Z [desktop-commander] [error] Unexpected token 'W', "Watching /"... is not valid JSON {"context":"connection","stack":"SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'W', "Watching /"... is not valid JSON\n at JSON.parse ()\n at EPe (/Applications/Claude.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/.vite/build/index.js:82:189)\n at SPe.readMessage (/Applications/Claude.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/.vite/build/

Read the thread · 2025-03-20 · closed · external user · 14 comments

Can I config allowed paths?

Great Project! I'm wondering how can I pass the allowed paths for desktop-commander? Maybe like mcp/filesystem?

Read the thread · 2025-03-11 · closed · external user · 14 comments

Desktop Commander MCP + Claude Desktop stopped working out of the blue - Any ideas?

Hello everyone,

I've been using Claude Desktop with Desktop Commander MCP with great success over the last few months, but this morning it simply stopped working. At first, I thought it was something wrong with Claude, but we've been troubleshooting it a bit and I think the issue is on my end somewhere.

The problem: Tool calls randomly fail to reach Desktop Commander. Some work, others just vanish - they never even appear in DC's MCP logs. When commands do arrive, DC responds in <100ms, so it'

Read the thread · 2026-02-01 · closed · external user · 12 comments

Stuck while trying to read any dir inside /Users/myUser/a-dir in MacOS Sonoma

I added the MCP via NPX and the tools are correctly appearing in Claude Desktop. But When trying some as simple as a

/DIR/PATH/
List and classify the files in the dir

Claude just hangs and after a while it aborts trying to execute another command named lis_directories_allowed or something like that.

Here is the Claude Desktop Config

{
  "globalShortcut": "Alt+Space",
  "mcpServers": {

[Read the thread](https://github.com/wonderwhy-er/DesktopCommanderMCP/issues/39) · 2025-03-30 · open · external user · 12 comments

### Claude Desktop extension submission follow-ups

Hello from Anthropic! Thanks for submitting this to our desktop extension registry; we're excited about your submission. We have a few follow-up requests.

Welcome feedback to understand which of these is feasible / acceptable within the desired functionality of this extension.

### Must Fix

- Add destructive operation annotations to all modifying tools
- Provide clear privacy policy explaining data collection
  - Because you collect usage data that you transmit to GA, we ought to provide some 

[Read the thread](https://github.com/wonderwhy-er/DesktopCommanderMCP/issues/242) · 2025-09-16 · open · external user · 11 comments

### # Bug Report: "Cannot convert undefined or null to object" Error

# Bug Report: "Cannot convert undefined or null to object" Error

## Issue Summary
Desktop Commander MCP is throwing "Cannot convert undefined or null to object" errors on all file system and process operations, making the tool unusable. The error affects multiple tool categories systematically.

## Environment Details
- **Desktop Commander Version**: 0.2.6
- **Operating System**: macOS 15 (Sequoia) on M1 iMac
- **Claude Desktop Version**: Claude 0.12.28 (5f9bc7) 2025-07-18T21:14:50.000Z
- **Nod

[Read the thread](https://github.com/wonderwhy-er/DesktopCommanderMCP/issues/193) · 2025-07-23 · closed · external user · 10 comments

## Most recent

### Scoped command permissions / per-directory command allowlist

Allow a blocked command only inside selected directories.

```json
{
  "commandScopes": {
    "Remove-Item": ["C:\\Users\\me\\work"]
  }
}

Read the thread · 2026-08-27 · open · external user · 0 comments

list_processes returns garbled output on Windows — command name always empty, CPU/Memory fields show wrong data

Environment: Windows 11, Desktop Commander v0.2.46 (installed as a Claude Desktop Extension), Claude Desktop 1.37937.3.0

Description:

On Windows, list_processes returns output like this for every single process, regardless of what's actually running:

PID: 4, Command: , CPU: Services, Memory: 0
PID: 972, Command: , CPU: Services, Memory: 0
PID: 1200, Command: , CPU: Console, Memory: 1

The command name is always empty, and the CPU/Memory columns contain garbage ("Services", "

Read the thread · 2026-08-27 · open · external user · 1 comment

Remote 0.2.47: broadcast_v1 intermittently drops individual tool calls while device remains online

Summary

Remote Desktop Commander 0.2.47 intermittently drops individual remote tool calls when used from ChatGPT over broadcast_v1.

The important distinction from a normal command timeout is that the failed request never reaches the remote Desktop Commander process at all. Successful requests immediately before and after the failure are logged by the remote agent and complete in roughly 10 ms, while the missing request is completely absent from the agent journal.

The device remains onl

Read the thread · 2026-08-26 · open · external user · 3 comments

Remote 0.2.47: read_multiple_files with larger multi-image response closes MCP connection

Summary

On Remote Desktop Commander 0.2.47 on Windows, read_multiple_files reproducibly closes the local MCP stdio connection when the combined image response becomes sufficiently large.

The individual PNG files are valid and can all be read separately. Smaller multi-image batches also work. Increasing the same batch from 4 images to 5 images reproducibly causes:

MCP error -32000: Connection closed

After this happens, subsequent execution tools return:

Not connect

[Read the thread](https://github.com/wonderwhy-er/DesktopCommanderMCP/issues/658) · 2026-08-26 · open · external user · 1 comment

### Windows: plugin launch uses npx @latest, so it reinstalls on every start and never beats the 120s connect timeout

## Summary

The Claude Desktop **plugin** (`plugins/claude/.claude-plugin/plugin.json`) launches the server as:

```json
"mcpServers": {
  "desktop-commander": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y", "@wonderwhy-er/desktop-commander@latest"]
  }
}

Because of @latest, npm re-resolves the version on every launch. As soon as the npx-cached copy is one release behind, npx reinstalls the whole dependency tree before the server can answer initialize. On my machine that install takes

Read the thread · 2026-08-25 · open · external user · 1 comment

MCP spec conformance: 5 requirement(s) violated (via @hasmcp/mcp-spec-test) — spec 2025-11-25

Companion issue to the 2026-07-28 report filed separately (counts differ per revision, so filing individually rather than merging). When Desktop Commander MCP is tested against the 2025-11-25 revision, a version-less request and an unsupported-version handshake both get "server exited" instead of a response, and the official-SDK client can't complete initialize or list tools — 5 requirements violated, with 13 further checks unverifiable. As with the 2026-07-28 report, this may be a slow/flaky st

Read the thread · 2026-08-24 · open · external user · 0 comments

MCP spec conformance: 10 requirement(s) violated (via @hasmcp/mcp-spec-test) — spec 2026-07-28

When Desktop Commander MCP (via npx -y @wonderwhy-er/desktop-commander@latest) is tested against the 2026-07-28 MCP spec revision with @hasmcp/mcp-spec-test, the initial server/discover and version-less requests never get a response within the 10s timeout, and the connection is later reported closed. The package does install and run (the whole test took ~27s, well past typical MCP handshake latency), so this may be a slow first-run/cold-start rather than a hard crash, but it exceeds what a

Read the thread · 2026-08-24 · open · external user · 0 comments

Remote channel repeatedly goes offline with "IncreaseConnectionPool" after socket 1006 disconnects

Summary

Remote Desktop Commander repeatedly becomes unreachable even though the Ubuntu machine and the desktop-commander remote process continue running normally.

The device may temporarily appear as online, but the remote channel itself is not usable. Restarting the remote agent restores connectivity temporarily, but the same failure can return after several minutes.

The most notable error is:

IncreaseConnectionPool: Please increase your connection pool size

This error a

Read the thread · 2026-08-24 · open · external user · 2 comments

Server startup takes 8-12s; 71% is module resolution (1,044 internalModuleStat calls)

Summary

Cold start of the MCP server takes 8.4 to 12.2 seconds before it can answer an initialize request. CPU profiling shows roughly 71% of that is Node resolving and reading modules from disk, not doing any work.

This matters because MCP clients spawn their own instance per session. On a client with a ~10s startup timeout the handshake intermittently loses the race and the server is reported as failing to start.

Environment

desktop-commander 0.2.46 (Desktop Extension build)
No

Read the thread · 2026-08-22 · open · external user · 0 comments

The OAuth authorization issue previously reported in #601 appears to have returned.

Steps to reproduce: 1)Open Desktop Commander in ChatGPT. 2)Start the authorization/connect flow. 3)Continue to the Desktop Commander OAuth authorization page. 4)Authorization fails immediately with: { "error": "server_error", "error_description": "Failed to process authorization request: Failed to create OAuth session"}.

Prior to the current failure, Desktop Commander had been randomly losing authorization roughly every 10–15 hours. Re-authorization would temporarily restore access. This may be

Read the thread · 2026-08-21 · closed · external user · 2 comments

Slow/inconsistent initialize response causes Cowork/Code shared-pool timeout

Desktop Commander MCP — Slow/Inconsistent `initialize` Handshake Causing Cowork/Code Timeout

Summary

Desktop Commander (installed via Claude Desktop's Extensions/.dxt system) intermittently takes 45–60+ seconds to respond to the MCP initialize request on startup, instead of the ~5 seconds seen on a clean launch. When the delay exceeds Cowork/Code's shared-pool startup timeout (~55–60s), the se

Read the thread · 2026-08-21 · open · external user · 2 comments

Linux/systemd: start_process background jobs die when Desktop Commander restarts

Summary

On Linux, when the Desktop Commander remote device runs as a systemd service, commands launched through start_process normally remain in the service's cgroup. A service stop or restart therefore terminates those commands and their descendants under systemd's control-group kill semantics.

That cleanup policy is a safe default for controller-owned work. The surprising part is the user-facing contract: Desktop Commander advertises timeout and "background execution" for long-running c

Read the thread · 2026-08-20 · open · external user · 0 comments

start_search docs misstate filename and literalSearch matching semantics

Summary

start_search currently publishes a pattern-matching contract that implies literalSearch=false means regex matching generally. That is not true for all search modes.

Verified independently on current main / v0.2.47 (9bd8422).

Reproduction

With files:

target-alpha.txt
target-beta.txt
target-gamma.log
notes.txt

File-name searches behave as follows:

searchType="files", pattern="target-.*\\.txt$", literalSearch=false -> 0 results
`searchType="files",

Read the thread · 2026-08-19 · open · external user · 0 comments

Remote 0.2.47 can report online/pong while all execution tools return Not connected

Summary

Remote Desktop Commander 0.2.47 can enter a false-healthy state where the control plane looks healthy but the execution data plane is unusable.

Observed from a ChatGPT Remote MCP connector on Windows:

list_devices: device is online
auth_token: valid
capabilities include app_version: 0.2.47 and transport_broadcast_v1: true
last_seen continues to advance
ping: returns pong
execution tools such as read_file, get_config, start_process, and `get_recen

Read the thread · 2026-08-19 · open · external user · 3 comments

`read_file` leaks the ReadStream fd whenever the line budget is reached, which blocks `MoveFileEx(..., MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING)` on that path indefinitely (Windows)

This is additional data for #476, not a new report. #476 already describes the symptom and guessed the cause correctly. What follows adds: the exact trigger condition (measured, 108 attempts), the boundary case that pins the mechanism down, confirmation

Read the thread · 2026-08-19 · open · external user · 0 comments

Your MCP server is listed on DReview

Hi — just wanted to flag that Desktop Commander MCP is listed on DReview (https://dreview.co/tools/desktop-commander-mcp), a free directory of MCP servers with per-client install configs. No action needed on your end — feel free to link to the listing from your README if useful, or let me know if anything about the listing needs a correction.

Thanks for building this — it's a genuinely useful server.

Read the thread · 2026-08-06 · open · external user · 4 comments

The remaining reports are on the project's issue tracker.

Reported issues for Desktop Commander

Most discussed

[Error] Failed to call tool get_file_info: TypeError: Cannot convert undefined or null to object

ACPCodex binary path mismatch causes npx fallback, EPIPE and initSession timeout

Errors on startup on mac

Can I config allowed paths?

Desktop Commander MCP + Claude Desktop stopped working out of the blue - Any ideas?

Stuck while trying to read any dir inside /Users/myUser/a-dir in MacOS Sonoma

list_processes returns garbled output on Windows — command name always empty, CPU/Memory fields show wrong data

Remote 0.2.47: broadcast_v1 intermittently drops individual tool calls while device remains online

Summary

Remote 0.2.47: read_multiple_files with larger multi-image response closes MCP connection

Summary

MCP spec conformance: 5 requirement(s) violated (via @hasmcp/mcp-spec-test) — spec 2025-11-25

MCP spec conformance: 10 requirement(s) violated (via @hasmcp/mcp-spec-test) — spec 2026-07-28

Remote channel repeatedly goes offline with "IncreaseConnectionPool" after socket 1006 disconnects

Summary

Server startup takes 8-12s; 71% is module resolution (1,044 internalModuleStat calls)

Summary

Environment

The OAuth authorization issue previously reported in #601 appears to have returned.

Slow/inconsistent initialize response causes Cowork/Code shared-pool timeout

Desktop Commander MCP — Slow/Inconsistent initialize Handshake Causing Cowork/Code Timeout

Summary

Linux/systemd: start_process background jobs die when Desktop Commander restarts

Summary

start_search docs misstate filename and literalSearch matching semantics

Summary

Reproduction

Remote 0.2.47 can report online/pong while all execution tools return Not connected

Summary

read_file leaks the ReadStream fd whenever the line budget is reached, which blocks MoveFileEx(..., MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING) on that path indefinitely (Windows)

read_file leaks the ReadStream fd whenever the line budget is reached, which blocks MoveFileEx(..., MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING) on that path indefinitely (Windows)

Your MCP server is listed on DReview

Desktop Commander MCP — Slow/Inconsistent `initialize` Handshake Causing Cowork/Code Timeout

`read_file` leaks the ReadStream fd whenever the line budget is reached, which blocks `MoveFileEx(..., MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING)` on that path indefinitely (Windows)

`read_file` leaks the ReadStream fd whenever the line budget is reached, which blocks `MoveFileEx(..., MOVEFILE_REPLACE_EXISTING)` on that path indefinitely (Windows)