How to Install Claude Code: Desktop App or Terminal

Claude Code installs two ways: download the desktop app and click through an installer, or paste one command into a terminal. Both run the same engine and share the same settings, so the choice is about which interface you want to look at. Either path takes about five minutes.

If you’ve read that Claude Code is the AI coding tool worth using, then landed on a page telling you to enable WSL 2 and check your Node version, you found the developer instructions. There’s a shorter way in.

Before you start

Three things have to be true.

A paid Claude plan. Pro is $20/month, or $17/month if you pay $200 up front for the year. Max starts at $100/month, and Team is $25 per seat monthly ($20 billed annually). Anthropic’s docs are blunt about the free tier: “The free Claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code access.” We break down every tier in what Claude Code costs.
A supported machine. macOS 13.0 or later, Windows 10 build 1809 or later, or Ubuntu 20.04 / Debian 10 and up. You need 4 GB of RAM and an x64 or ARM64 processor — any laptop from the last several years clears that bar.
Git, if you’re on Windows. Local sessions in the desktop app need Git for Windows installed. Most Macs ship with it already.

One more constraint worth checking before you pay: Claude Code only works in Anthropic’s supported countries.

Step 1 — Choose the desktop app or the terminal

	Desktop app	Terminal (CLI)
How you install it	Download an installer, double-click it	Paste one command
What you look at	A window with tabs, a file editor, and visual diffs	Text in a terminal
Best for	Anyone who’d rather click than type commands	People already at home in a terminal
Updates	Automatic	Automatic on the native install; manual with Homebrew or WinGet

The two share configuration — CLAUDE.md project rules, MCP servers, skills, settings — so anything you set up in one applies in the other. You can run both on the same project at the same time.

Step 2 — Install the desktop app

Anthropic publishes a universal macOS build that covers both Intel and Apple Silicon, a Windows x64 installer with a separate ARM64 download, and a Linux version in beta through apt or a .deb package. Grab yours from Anthropic’s desktop quickstart and run it like any other app.

Then:

Launch Claude from your Applications folder, the Start menu, or your Linux app launcher, and sign in with your Anthropic account.
Click the Code tab at the top center. The app has three: Chat is ordinary conversation with no file access, Cowork runs an autonomous agent in a sandboxed virtual machine, and Code is the one that touches your actual files with your approval on every change.
Pick Local and choose a folder. Start with a small project you know well.

If clicking Code prompts you to upgrade, your account is still on the free plan. If it prompts you to sign in online, finish that and restart the app.

The desktop app includes Claude Code. There’s no Node.js to install and no command-line tool to set up beside it.

Step 3 — Install the terminal version

Anthropic recommends the native installer, which updates itself in the background. Open a terminal and paste the line for your system.

macOS, Linux, or WSL:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

Windows PowerShell:

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

Windows CMD:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd

Already living in a package manager? brew install --cask claude-code on macOS and winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode on Windows both work, and Anthropic publishes signed apt, dnf, and apk repositories for Linux. The trade-off: these skip the background auto-update, so you run brew upgrade claude-code or winget upgrade Anthropic.ClaudeCode yourself when a new version ships.

There’s an npm package too — npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code, which has required Node.js 22 or later since version 2.1.198. Anthropic’s docs carry an explicit warning against installing it with sudo, which causes permission problems later.

Check that the terminal install landed:

claude --version

A working install prints a version number like 2.1.211 (Claude Code).

Now open a terminal inside the folder you want to work in and run claude. The first run sends you to your browser to log in. Claude Code accepts Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise, and Console accounts.

If anything looks off, run claude doctor. It prints read-only diagnostics without starting a session — install health, settings-file errors, and warnings with the suggested fix attached.

Once you’re in, our walkthrough of how to use Claude Code covers your first real build, and these Claude Code prompts give you something better to type than “make me an app.”

What trips people up

command not found: claude. The install worked; your shell can’t see it. The installer drops the binary at ~/.local/bin/claude on macOS and Linux, or %USERPROFILE%\.local\bin\claude.exe on Windows, and that folder isn’t always on your PATH. On macOS, which uses zsh by default:

echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Swap ~/.zshrc for ~/.bashrc on most Linux distributions. Closing and reopening the terminal often fixes it on its own.

The wrong Windows shell. 'irm' is not recognized means you’re in CMD and pasted the PowerShell command. The token '&&' is not a valid statement separator means the reverse. PowerShell’s prompt starts with PS C:\; CMD’s starts with C:\.

A 403, or syntax error near unexpected token '<'. The installer couldn’t reach downloads.claude.ai and got an error page instead of a script. Usually a corporate proxy or network filter. If you’re behind one, set HTTPS_PROXY before installing and ask IT for the address.

An old API key overriding your subscription. If you have an active plan and still see This organization has been disabled, a leftover ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your shell profile is being used instead of your login. Run unset ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, then delete the export line from ~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, or ~/.profile.

Logging in over WSL, SSH, or in a container. The browser opens on a different machine than the one running Claude Code, so the redirect never comes back. Sign in on whichever machine opened the browser, then paste the code it shows you into the terminal prompt.

The bottom line

Installing Claude Code is a five-minute job on either path: download the desktop app and sign in, or paste one command and run claude. What takes longer is pointing it at a problem people will pay to have solved. That’s the gap Software Secrets 2.0 was written to close, and the whole book is free.