How it works & safety
Everything under the hood — what changes, what it never touches, and how to undo it. Nothing here is required reading to use the tool.
How it works
Claude Desktop shows every message left-aligned, with no sense of which way a paragraph should flow. This tool adds a small text-direction layer to Claude's interface. For each block it detects the language and sets the right direction — right-to-left for Hebrew/Arabic/Persian/Urdu — while keeping code, math and currency the right way round.
It's a pure layout layer: it only reads the page to decide direction. It never reads, stores or sends your conversations.
What it fixes
Pure Hebrew / Arabic
right-aligned, base direction RTL
Mixed “שלום world 123”
base direction from the first strong character
“2 + 3 = 5” inside Hebrew
kept as an LTR island, not mirrored
LaTeX vs. currency ($x^2$ / $5.99)
LaTeX isolated LTR; currency stays text
Hebrew tables
column order flipped RTL
Code blocks & KaTeX
kept LTR
English-only chats
unchanged — no regression
Install, uninstall & updates
Requires macOS with Claude Desktop in /Applications. Uses only built-in tools (Perl, codesign) — no Node, no network. Easiest path: unzip and double-click “Install RTL.command”. Or in Terminal:
unzip claude-desktop-rtl-macos.zip
cd macos
./install.sh./install.sh --reset-session instead — you'll just log into Claude once.Uninstall
Double-click “Uninstall RTL.command” (or run ./uninstall.sh). Restores the original app byte-for-byte.
Survive Claude auto-updates (optional)
./watcher/install-watcher.sh # re-apply RTL after each Claude update
./watcher/uninstall-watcher.sh # stop auto-re-applyIs it safe?
Your chats never leave your device
The added code makes no network calls — no fetch, XHR or WebSocket. It only reads the page to decide text direction.
No code execution
No eval, no dynamic code. It only sets CSS direction on text.
Backed up before any change
Your original app files are backed up and verified before anything is written.
Fully reversible
Uninstall restores the original files byte-for-byte.
macOS: ad-hoc re-sign only
No certificates are added to your system trust store.
Your tools keep working
We never touch MCP or worker files, so connected tools are unaffected.
Version 0.1.5 · released 2026-07-08 · macOS beta · Windows beta
Verify your download against SHA-256 checksums. Every file in the download is human-readable source — no compiled binaries.
MIT-licensed (the license ships inside the download). Builds on the MIT detection core from shraga100/claude-desktop-rtl-patch, and draws on the math-isolation idea from DavidiBellaire/Claude-UniMath. Not affiliated with Anthropic.