API Error: 401 and no way to resolve it

[MrEdwards007]

This program is awesome, so thank you.

I have two issues. The first is that after periods of inactivity, I get an an "API Error: 401"
I expect that, as the token should expire for security reason, however, I don't have a way to perform the "claude code /login" that is recommended to force the update from within the desktop application to update the token.

I did go to the terminal and login, which guided me through the browser to reauthorize. I authenticated and was in, within the terminal but that didn't change the status for the desktop application.

Linux Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS

API Error: 401 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"authentication_error","message":"OAuth token has expired. Please obtain a new token or refresh your existing token."},"request_id":"req_011CWyxjNDsrLp4WvAJWyZPV"} · Please run /login

When I look in the Claude Code settings, it appears that I have authorization tokens and they are connecting but that is not working.
This is the second time, I've encountered this issue, though I've only had the program for about 24 hours.

I logged out of the application and back in, re-authorizing the sessions, which worked last night but that didn't work today.

Also, isnt there supposed to be a "CLI" button above the chat interface and I do have VS Code installed but its not recognized.

[MrEdwards007]

I was able to get through this before (likely by luck) but this second time, I could not get it to work.

After multiple failed attempts and a significant number of hours to figure this out, I came up with nothing

Until...

From the terminal, using Claude Code, we have the authorization token problem resolved in about 20-25 minutes. It searched my machine and found one of the json files needed fixing. After the problem was fixed, I asked it tell me what the problem was and to create a script to fix this for the future, since its happened to me twice already. I also asked it to generalize this for other OS's, even though this forum is for Linux users.

I can tell you first-hand what did NOT work

• clearing the cache
• claude code /logout, claude code /login
• killing Claude and Electron process instances (by itself)
• rerunning npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

I'm working on Linux Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS.

What DID work

• Removing the "oauth:tokenCache" line from the "config.json" file

claude-fix-oauth-README.md

claude-fix-oauth.sh

[aaddrick]

Hey @MrEdwards007 !

Sorry about the delay and good catch on the fix. I've added it to the README.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. I'll leave the issue open until I dig into the source and see if it's an upstream issue or a patch is required.

Thanks again for the help! Hate you had to sink that much time into it.

-Aaddrick

[aaddrick]

Hey @MrEdwards007, thanks again for tracking this down and sharing the script. The README now covers the oauth:tokenCache removal as the fix for 401 errors on Linux. Since token expiry is upstream Electron/OAuth behavior, there's nothing we can do to prevent it at the packaging level — but the workaround is straightforward enough. Closing this out.

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Written by Claude Sonnet 4.6 via Claude Code

[poromaa]

I just opened a terminal and started claude, then /login
Then everything worked again.

[carlos-garcia]

Hi all, i am having this error on my side (or similar)

The only fix i got working is rebooting my pc... after a quick discussion with claude, he suggested to restart the cowork service..

systemctl --user restart claude-cowork

since that worked, claude suggest that "OAuth tokens on Linux don't always refresh cleanly, especially for the desktop app's Code tab, which reads a cached token that goes stale. A reboot works because it reinitializes the cowork service and clears in-memory state — which is exactly why systemctl --user restart claude-cowork also fixes it. Quicker and less invasive."

writing here if anybody searches and face this issue thread. Im on CachyOS if anything