Claude Code now falls back to polling settings files when native file-watching doesn't work on your system
Claude Code's detector for settings-file changes now checks whether native filesystem watching actually delivers change events on your machine. If the check finds the watcher stays silent, or fails outright (for example due to EMFILE, ENFILE, or ENOSPC errors — signs the system has run out of file-watch resources), it switches to checking settings files and directories on a timer instead of relying on native watching, and logs a warning plus a telemetry event.
On some systems, native file-watching silently doesn't work, which would mean changes to settings files go unnoticed. This fallback makes sure settings changes are still picked up even when that happens.