For Claude Desktop Users

In this tutorial, you will extend Claude for Desktop so that it can read from your computer’s file system, write new files, move files, and even search files.

Claude for Desktop Filesystem

Don’t worry — it will ask you for your permission before executing these actions!

1. Download Claude for Desktop

Start by downloading Claude for Desktop, choosing either macOS or Windows. (Linux is not yet supported for Claude for Desktop.)

Follow the installation instructions.

If you already have Claude for Desktop, make sure it’s on the latest version by clicking on the Claude menu on your computer and selecting “Check for Updates…”

Why Claude for Desktop and not Claude.ai?

Because servers are locally run, MCP currently only supports desktop hosts. Remote hosts are in active development.

2. Add the Filesystem MCP Server

To add this filesystem functionality, we will be installing a pre-built Filesystem MCP Server to Claude for Desktop. This is one of dozens of servers created by Anthropic and the community.

Claude Menu

Developer Settings

This will create a configuration file at:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Open up the configuration file in any text editor. Replace the file contents with this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "/Users/username/Desktop",
        "/Users/username/Downloads"
      ]
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem",
        "C:\\Users\\username\\Desktop",
        "C:\\Users\\username\\Downloads"
      ]
    }
  }
}

🌐

How does the configuration file work?

This configuration file tells Claude for Desktop which MCP servers to start up every time you start the application. In this case, we have added one server called “filesystem” that will use the Node npx command to install and run @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem.

Make sure to replace username with your computer’s username. The paths should point to valid directories that you want Claude to be able to access and modify. It’s set up to work for Desktop and Downloads, but you can add more paths as well.

You will also need Node.js on your computer for this to run properly. To verify you have Node installed, open the command line on your computer.

On macOS, open the Terminal from your Applications folder
On Windows, press Windows + R, type “cmd”, and press Enter

Once in the command line, verify you have Node installed by entering in the following command:

node --version

If you get an error saying “command not found” or “node is not recognized”, download Node from nodejs.org.

⚠️

Command Privileges

Claude for Desktop will run the commands in the configuration file with the permissions of your user account, and access to your local files. Only add commands if you understand and trust the source.

3. Restart Claude

After updating your configuration file, you need to restart Claude for Desktop.

Upon restarting, you should see a hammer icon in the bottom right corner of the input box:

Claude Hammer Icon

After clicking on the hammer icon, you should see the tools that come with the Filesystem MCP Server:

Claude Tools

If your server isn’t being picked up by Claude for Desktop, proceed to the Troubleshooting section for debugging tips.

4. Try it out!

You can now talk to Claude and ask it about your filesystem. It should know when to call the relevant tools.

Things you might try asking Claude:

Can you write a poem and save it to my desktop?
What are some work-related files in my downloads folder?
Can you take all the images on my desktop and move them to a new folder called “Images”?

As needed, Claude will call the relevant tools and seek your approval before taking an action:

Approve Action

Troubleshooting

Server not showing up in Claude / hammer icon missing

Restart Claude for Desktop completely
Check your claude_desktop_config.json file syntax
Make sure the file paths included in claude_desktop_config.json are valid and that they are absolute and not relative
Look at logs to see why the server is not connecting
In your command line, try manually running the server (replacing username as you did in claude_desktop_config.json):

# MacOS/Linux
npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem /Users/username/Desktop /Users/username/Downloads

# Windows
npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem C:\Users\username\Desktop C:\Users\username\Downloads

Getting logs from Claude for Desktop

Claude.app logging related to MCP is written to log files in:

macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Claude
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\logs
mcp.log will contain general logging about MCP connections and connection failures.
Files named mcp-server-SERVERNAME.log will contain error (stderr) logging from the named server.

You can run the following command to list recent logs and follow along with any new ones (on Windows, it will only show recent logs):

# macOS/Linux
tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp*.log

# Windows
type "%APPDATA%\Claude\logs\mcp*.log"

Next steps

Explore other servers

Check out our gallery of official MCP servers and implementations

Build your own server

Now build your own custom server to use in Claude for Desktop and other clients

For Client Developers Quickstart