File access in Claude Desktop's chat mode had been flaky for a while: sometimes there, sometimes not, no obvious pattern. The standard fix, the one Claude itself gives you in a plain chat, is to hand-edit claude_desktop_config.json. I did that, and before I'd even confirmed it worked on its own, found something else: the same Filesystem settings, filed under two completely different sidebar labels, with nothing anywhere saying they're the same page. I only noticed because I'd enabled an unrelated extension that gives Claude direct control of the Mac, and used it to go audit the settings properly.
In this article
The question I actually needed answered
The fix that doesn't get you far
One page, two sidebar labels
