How to disable Claude Code's verb spinner feature

Claude Code includes a default feature called the verb spinner that displays rotating whimsical gerunds during processing. The author finds this feature distracting, citing examples like seeing words such as 'Seasoning', 'Leavening', 'Perambulating', 'Musing', 'Crafting', 'Nucleating', 'Orbiting', 'Smooshing', 'Metamorphosing', 'Gusting', and 'Zesting' while waiting for responses to technical queries.
How to disable the verb spinner
You can turn off this feature by editing the Claude settings file. The source provides a specific configuration change:
"spinnerVerbs": {
"mode": "replace",
"verbs": [" "]
}
To implement this change:
- Edit the file at
~/.claude/settings.json - Insert a blank space in the verbs array as shown above
- Alternatively, use append mode if you want to add your own custom verbs
The author notes that imagining the prompt used to generate the original list of whimsical verbs only makes the feature more frustrating, describing it as 'West Coast whimsical-flavored bullshit' that doesn't belong in a development shell environment.
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