Chrome process persists after MCP plugin is disabled

[hengrumay]

Summary

When the chrome-devtools-mcp plugin is disabled (set to false in Claude Code enabledPlugins), the Chrome instance it spawned continues running indefinitely. Had to manually kill the processes days later.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install chrome-devtools-mcp@claude-plugins-official in Claude Code
2. Use it (Chrome spawns with --user-data-dir=~/.cache/chrome-devtools-mcp/chrome-profile)
3. Disable the plugin in settings: "chrome-devtools-mcp@claude-plugins-official": false
4. Chrome processes persist — still running days later

Expected behavior

Disabling the plugin (or exiting Claude Code) should terminate the spawned Chrome instance.

Workaround

pkill -f 'chrome-devtools-mcp/chrome-profile'

Environment

• macOS (Darwin 25.3.0)
• Claude Code CLI
• Chrome 146.x

[OrKoN]

@hengrumay could you please confirm that the chrome-devtoos-mcp server instance is not running? I think claude code might not be shutting down the MCP server gracefully or not shutting it down at all. E.g., calling kill -s SIGTERM <pid> or kill -9 <pid> allows chrome-devtools-mcp to clean up the child browser process.

[hengrumay]

Thanks for the suggested resolution!

Confirmed — the chrome-devtools-mcp server instances were not being shut down by Claude Code.

I had 30 orphaned processes (11 MCP server instances + their watchdog/npm parent processes) accumulated over ~2 weeks across v0.20.0 and v0.20.2.

After running kill -s SIGTERM on all PIDs:

• 28/30 terminated cleanly on first SIGTERM
• 2 required a second SIGTERM (these were the active MCP instance for the current session)
• All watchdog children cleaned up properly — no SIGKILL needed

So SIGTERM cleanup works fine on chrome-devtools-mcp's side. The issue seems to be on the Claude Code side — not sending SIGTERM when a session exits or the plugin is disabled.

As a workaround, I've added a Stop hook in my Claude Code settings that runs pkill -f 'chrome-devtools-mcp' on session exit.

[OrKoN]

@hengrumay would you mind raising/finding an issue on the claude code side? There were issues like this in other clients (e.g., google-gemini/gemini-cli#13391) and it usually best to fix it right in the client.

[hengrumay]

Filed on the Claude Code side as requested: anthropics/claude-code#42300

References the similar Gemini CLI fix (google-gemini/gemini-cli#13391, resolved Jan 2026).