Posting in case it saves someone the rabbit hole I just went down. Symptom: the Claude extension is installed + active in Chrome, Claude Desktop’s browser features work fine, but Claude Code (CLI) keeps saying " Browser extension is not connected " — and /chrome → select browser throws a weird JSON Parse error: Unexpected identifier “Browser” . I went deep on native-messaging manifests, Chrome profiles, reinstalls, endless restarts… none of that was the fix. What actually fixed it: re-authenticating Claude Code (sign out, sign back in), then restart Chrome + the CLI. Connected instantly. That generic error is misleading — in my case it was just a stale auth token on the CLI side, not anything wrong with the extension or config. So before you rabbit-hole: re-auth first. (macOS, Chrome 148, Claude Code 2.1.160 — but should apply generally.) submitted by /u/ExistingCard9621
Originally posted by u/ExistingCard9621 on r/ClaudeCode