Installing on a Locked Down Work Mac
Arun Nagarathanam · 31 Aug 2026 · Toolkit · 14 of 59 in this course
An exclusive resource for students of Arun's Claude Code Course.
If the install command gives you a permissions error, your Mac is company managed. That error is how you find out.
Three paths usually work anyway, and at least one of them almost always gets through.
| Route | Why it sometimes works where the installer does not | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Homebrew | Operates under its own permission model, so it sometimes slips past restrictions the curl installer hits. It does not auto-update Claude Code, so you upgrade by hand | https://brew.sh |
| The Visual Studio Code extension | Your IT department may approve it more readily, because it lives inside your editor rather than installing a global command-line tool | https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=anthropic.claude-code |
| The web version | Needs no local installation at all and runs entirely in your browser | https://claude.ai/code |
In a fully locked down environment, the web version is often the fastest way to get started while you work on getting the full command-line install approved.
See Where You Stand
This resource is one piece of a much bigger system.
Take the free Claude Code Readiness Quiz. It is 15 short situations, scored out of 100, and it tests how you handle a job rather than what you know about a tool, so you can take it without ever having opened Claude Code.
Take the Claude Code Readiness Quiz →15 situations · Scored out of 100 · Free