The desktop app
A Tauri 2 shell: the same web UI in the system webview plus what a page can't have. It exists for Windows (a single .exe, nothing to install), macOS — Apple Silicon and Intel (.dmg) — and Linux (.deb); the files are on the Installation page.
- a tray with the agent's state and "do not disturb for an hour";
- system notifications — no https and no service worker required;
- autostart at login;
- a global hotkey;
- a second window: a project and a chat open separately — by the ↗ icon or a middle click, as in a browser.
Three modes
The settings decide what this window works as:
| Mode | What happens |
|---|---|
| server | the api runs inside and the window looks at it — the usual install on a home machine |
| client | there is no server of its own at all, the window looks at the home Clauder |
| both | both of the above |
"Client" mode is about a laptop on the same network: it doesn't have to carry a second Claude around with its own memory and its own session list.
Small things you notice every day
A reply or a question that arrived unseen (no window in focus) marks the tray with a green dot and flashes the window in the taskbar until you look into any of them. On macOS the Dock icon bounces three times and settles down.
It updates itself. On Windows the Update button in the settings downloads the new version, swaps the file and restarts the app; on macOS and Linux it gives a link to your build. A toast tells you a new version is out. More in Updating.
Reachable from the local network right away: from the first launch the app listens on the network, and a phone connects with the code from the settings without hunting for switches. Without an access key nothing opens from the network. See Access from outside.
External links from the feed and the settings open in the system browser rather than replacing Clauder itself.
Client-side settings survive an update: the theme, the feed view and the rest are kept on disk with the app's other data, not in the window's browser storage.
The app's data — config.json, the database, favourites and titles — lives on Windows in a clauder-data folder next to the executable, so the app travels on a flash drive as a whole; on macOS in ~/Library/Application Support/Clauder, on Linux in ~/.config/clauder. Move it elsewhere with the CLAUDER_HOME variable.
On Linux the tray icon needs the AppIndicator library (libayatana-appindicator3-1) — on Ubuntu and Debian it comes with the package. GNOME without the AppIndicator extension shows no tray, but the window, notifications and everything else work.
Settings instead of .env
Everything that is edited in .env under docker is edited here in the window: network access and the port, session directories, the agent's allowed roots, addresses for hooks, the bot token, access keys for devices.
Builds without a window
Besides the windowed app there is clauder-server-… — the server only, no window. That is the option for a home machine or a service: settings are edited with flags and config.json, and you look at it from a browser and from the phone. It is not published in the releases — you build it from source with ./scripts/build-local.sh --server.