Description
After using the cowork feature, Claude Desktop becomes extremely slow - slow startup, UI lag, and slow responses. Performance degrades over time even during a single session.
Investigation
VM Bundle (10GB)
The cowork feature creates a VM bundle at:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle/rootfs.img
This file grows to 10GB and is never cleaned up. It regenerates quickly after deletion (deleted one day, back to 10GB the next).
Cleanup Test Results
Deleted vm_bundles, Cache, and Code Cache directories (reduced from 11GB to 639MB).
Result: ~75% faster immediately after cleanup on tasks that previously failed/hung.
... continue reading