Claude Code 2.1.116: Thinking Progress Hints and Terminal Input Fixes
Claude CodeClaude Code 2.1.116 includes a broad set of terminal and UI polish improvements that collectively make the day-to-day editing experience more reliable across a wide range of terminal emulators. The thinking spinner now displays inline progress messages (still thinking, thinking more, almost done thinking) rather than a separate hint row, giving users a clearer sense of progress during long operations. A series of keyboard input bugs affecting Kitty keyboard protocol users — covering Ctrl+-, Cmd+Left/Right, and Ctrl+Z — are resolved, and Devanagari and other Indic scripts now render with correct column alignment.
Sources & Mentions
3 external resources covering this update
Thinking Progress Hints Replace the Separate Hint Row
Previously, Claude Code showed a separate row below the spinner when extended thinking was underway. In 2.1.116, progress hints are folded directly into the spinner itself, cycling through "still thinking", "thinking more", and "almost done thinking" as time passes. The change removes visual clutter and gives users more meaningful feedback during long operations without occupying an extra line of terminal space.
Terminal Input Fixes for Kitty Protocol Terminals
A cluster of keyboard input bugs affecting terminals using the Kitty keyboard protocol — including iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty, WezTerm, and Windows Terminal — are resolved in this release:
- Ctrl+- no longer fails to trigger undo in Kitty protocol terminals.
- Cmd+Left / Cmd+Right now correctly jump to line start and line end, restoring standard navigation behavior.
- Ctrl+Z no longer hangs the terminal when Claude Code is launched through a wrapper process such as
npxorbun run.
These three bugs affected a significant portion of the macOS and advanced terminal user base where modern protocol support is standard.
Indic Script Rendering Fixed
Devanagari and other Indic scripts previously rendered with broken column alignment in the terminal UI — characters would appear shifted or misaligned relative to surrounding text. This is now corrected, making Claude Code usable without rendering artifacts for users whose workflows involve Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Nepali, or other Devanagari-script languages.
Scrollback and Modal Fixes
Two additional display issues are resolved:
Scrollback duplication. In inline mode, resizing the terminal or receiving large output bursts could cause earlier conversation history to repeat in the scrollback buffer. This is fixed in 2.1.116.
Modal search overflow. At short terminal heights, modal search dialogs (such as the /resume session picker) could overflow the screen, hiding the search input and keyboard hints. The dialogs are now constrained to fit within the available terminal height.
Additional UI Improvements
The /reload-plugins command and background plugin auto-update now automatically install missing plugin dependencies from marketplaces that have already been added — removing a step where plugins could silently fail to load due to an unmet dependency. The /branch command, which previously rejected sessions with transcripts larger than 50MB, now handles them correctly.