[BUG] Cowork: Cannot use folders outside home directory on Windows (secondary drive)

[juanyepes-softwareone]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Cowork restricts folder selection to the user's home directory on Windows. When selecting
a folder located on a secondary internal drive (e.g., D:), the following dialog appears
and blocks access:

"The selected folder is outside your home directory. Only folders within your home
directory can be used."

A symbolic link workaround was also tested: creating a symlink inside the home directory
pointing to the target folder on the secondary drive. Cowork resolves the symlink to its
real path and applies the same restriction, making this workaround ineffective.

What Should Happen?

Cowork should allow users to select and work with folders on any local drive, not just
within C:\Users<username>. Users should be able to explicitly grant access to folders
on secondary drives, as is standard behavior in other file-access tools on Windows.

Error Messages/Logs

Dialog title: Invalid Folder Selection
Message: "The selected folder is outside your home directory. 
Only folders within your home directory can be used. You can select a different folder."

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Claude Desktop (latest version) on Windows
2. Open the Cowork tab
3. Click to select a working folder
4. Navigate to a folder on a secondary internal drive (e.g., D:\MyProjects)
5. Observe the "Invalid Folder Selection" error dialog — folder cannot be selected

Additional step tested as workaround:
6. Create a symbolic link in the home directory pointing to the secondary drive folder:
New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path "C:\Users<user>\MyProjects" -Target "D:\MyProjects"
7. Select the symlink folder in Cowork
8. Same restriction applies — symlink is resolved to real path and rejected

Note: The secondary drive is a local internal disk, not a network share or removable device.
Related issue for macOS external volumes: #19318

Claude Model

Sonnet (default)

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

1.1.4328.0

Claude Code Version

2.1.62

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Warp

Additional Information

No response

[jonnyk17]

Same on mac

[jealius]

Junctions also fails. This needs to be fixed!

[TheAdamWarlock]

Facing same issue for Cowork. This issue looks similar to #20382 which is now closed

[michaelalanrunge]

Same here on Mac. I have an external drive 1T that I need to work with but it fails because Claude only wants to use my local home directory. Please fix this.

[moazam1]

Did someone find a fix yet?

[mrponzo]

have the same issue

[owenwp]

Same. Windows allows you to explicitly move your various libraries (My Documents, My Downloads, etc) to another drive, a common practice to keep user and system data separate, and this breaks Cowork completely. My home directory on C:\ basically only contains AppData.

[Fustyz]

Following having the same issue Mac OS

[sclark39]

I also would like to use Co Work outside of my Home directory, is there no option for this?

I have the same issue with having redirected my Desktop folder to a different drive, and can't target it with Cowork.

[rathga]

Even more crazy, Claude Desktop has saved its scheduled tasks in D:\OneDrive\Documents\Claude for me, which is outside it's home directory and the tasks cannot access them... so all scheduled tasks now don't know what they are doing and fail!

[zenjabba]

Struggling with the same issue on mac. Think this needs to be pushed up a little higher