Claude Desktop Restart

Enables automated restarts of Claude Desktop on macOS by leveraging psutil to safely terminate and relaunch the application process.

Installation Instructions

README: https://github.com/non-dirty/mcp-server-restart

mcp-server-restart

Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for restarting Claude Desktop for Mac

Description

Using Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Claude Desktop tool installation is a bit cumbersome. The mcp-installer makes things easier by using MCP to allow you to ask Claude to install MCP tools.

Once they are installed, you still need to restart Claude Desktop to make the changes take effect... That is where mcp-server-restart comes in!

The mcp-server-restart package provides a MCP server for restarting Claude Desktop for Mac.

Usage

Ask Claude Desktop "restart Claude" and it will restart the application.

Features

Resources

The server provides a status resource:

• claude://status - Returns the current status of Claude Desktop
  • Returns JSON with running status, PID, and timestamp
  • MIME type: application/json

Tools

The server implements one tool:

• restart_claude - Restarts the Claude Desktop application
  • Safely terminates existing process if running
  • Launches new instance
  • Provides progress notifications during restart

Installation for Claude Desktop

Installation requires editing your Claude Desktop config file on MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Option 1: Install both the mcp-installer and the mcp-server-restart packages:

Add the following to your Claude Desktop config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-installer": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@anaisbetts/mcp-installer"
      ]
    },
    "mcp-server-restart": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-restart"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Option 1: Install only the mcp-server-restart package:

Add the following to your Claude Desktop config file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-server-restart": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-restart"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

Hey Claude, install the MCP server named mcp-server-fetch then restart Claude

Please restart Claude

Testing

Run the test suite:

pytest

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details