How to Install Claude Code (Mac, Windows and Linux)

I watched somebody spend forty minutes installing Claude Code last week.

Forty minutes. On a two minute job.

Not because they were slow, but because the guide they were following told them to install Node.js first, then npm, then fight with permissions, then sudo their way into a mess that took longer to unpick than the original install would have taken.

That guide was not wrong when it was written. It is just old. And the internet does not update old guides, it just leaves them lying around like a rake in the grass.

So here is the actual current way to do it. On every platform. Plus the one error that gets almost everybody.

Before You Install Claude Code

You need a paid plan. This is the bit people find out too late, and it is genuinely irritating. Claude Code does not work on the free Claude plan. You need Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise, or a Console account billed by the token.

The install itself works fine without one. You just get to the login screen and hit a wall.

Your machine is almost certainly fine. macOS 13 or newer, Windows 10 build 1809 or newer, or Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 10 or Alpine 3.19 and up. 4 GB of RAM, x64 or ARM64. If your computer is from this decade you are good.

How to Install Claude Code on Mac, Linux or WSL

One line. That's the whole thing.

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

That is the native installer. It pulls down a self-contained binary, so there is no Node.js, no npm, nothing to set up first. And it quietly updates itself from then on, which is exactly what you want from a tool you are going to use every day.

Now open a terminal inside a project and start it.

cd ~/projects/my-app
claude

It sends you to your browser to log in. Do that, and you are in.

Two minutes. Told you.

How to Install Claude Code on Windows

Two real options, and the right one depends on where your code already lives.

Native Windows. Run this in PowerShell. No Administrator needed.

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

In CMD instead? Different command.

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

Not sure which one you are staring at? Look at the prompt. PowerShell shows PS C:\. CMD just shows C:\ with no PS. If you run the wrong one it will yell at you, which is at least honest of it.

Grab Git for Windows while you are at it. It is technically optional, but it gives Claude Code a real Bash shell to run commands in. Without it, Claude falls back to PowerShell, which works but behaves differently from every tutorial you are about to read. Save yourself the confusion.

WSL 2. If your projects already live in WSL, or you want sandboxed command execution, install inside WSL and use the Mac and Linux command from above. Run it from the WSL terminal, not from PowerShell.

Other Ways to Install Claude Code (And Why You Probably Should Not)

The native installer is the one. These exist if you have a reason.

Homebrew, on Mac. Does not auto-update, so brew upgrade claude-code is now your problem.

brew install --cask claude-code

WinGet, on Windows. Also does not auto-update.

winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode

npm, if you insist. This is the method every stale blog post recommends and it is the one causing all the trouble. It now needs Node.js 22 or newer, and it installs the exact same binary the native installer does. So you are adding a dependency, a version requirement, and a permissions minefield... to get the identical result.

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

And whatever you do, do not run that with sudo. That is the rake in the grass. It causes permission problems that are a genuine pain to unpick later.

There are signed apt, dnf and apk repos too, if you manage your software through your distro like a grown-up.

Check That Claude Code Installed Correctly

claude --version

Want a fuller picture? There is a built-in diagnostic, and it is good. Run it.

claude doctor

Here is what a healthy install actually looks like, straight off my machine.

The line worth caring about is Config install method: native. That means you used the installer I told you to use and it will keep itself updated. If that says npm instead, you went the hard way. It still works, it is just now your job to update it.

Fixing Claude Code "command not found"

This is the big one. The one that makes people think the install failed.

It did not fail. The binary is right there. Your shell just cannot find it, because the folder it went into is not on your PATH.

Do this first. Close your terminal completely and open a new one.

That's it. That is genuinely the fix, most of the time. The installer edits your shell profile, and any terminal window that was already open never reads the updated version. People skip this step because it feels too stupid to be the answer.

It is the answer.

If it still fails, then the folder really is missing from your PATH. On Mac and Linux the binary lives at ~/.local/bin/claude, so add that folder to your PATH in ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc, then open a fresh terminal.

One Last Thing Before I Let You Go

You have it installed. Congratulations, you are now dangerous.

And the temptation right now is to open it in your biggest, gnarliest project and ask it to fix everything. Which is precisely how people end up concluding the tool does not work.

Do something small first. Open it in a real project and ask it to explain the codebase to you. It will go read your files to answer, and that single boring question does more for the rest of your session than any prompt trick you will ever find on Twitter.

Start there.