{"id":51940,"date":"2026-05-18T13:50:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T17:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51940"},"modified":"2026-07-27T14:41:43","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T18:41:43","slug":"claude-desktop-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/18\/claude-desktop-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Claude Desktop App"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Voorhees<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Late yesterday, Anthropic announced<\/a> messaging support for Claude Code<\/a>, allowing users to connect to a Claude Code session running on a Mac from a mobile device using Telegram and Discord bots. I spent a few hours playing with it last night, and despite being released as a research preview, the messaging integration is already very capable, but a little fiddly to set up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tim Hardwick<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Anthropic are out with yet another update to Claude AI: the company’s Claude Code and Cowork tools can now remotely control your Mac on your behalf.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The capability pairs with Dispatch (released last week) which lets you assign Claude tasks from your iPhone and return to finished work on your desktop. In the YouTube video embedded below, Anthropic’s demo shows a user asking Claude to export a pitch deck as a PDF and attach it to a meeting invite, all while the user is away from their Mac.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The new feature is essentially Anthropic’s version of OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent that went viral earlier this year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The Claude Mac client itself remains a lazy Electron clunker. If Claude Code is so good I don’t get why they don’t prove it by using it to make an even halfway decent native Mac app.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tim Hardwick<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Anthropic has released a redesigned Claude Code experience<\/a> for its Claude desktop app, bringing in a new sidebar for managing multiple sessions, a drag-and-drop layout for arranging the workspace, and more.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Anthropic has also dropped more of the developer workflow into the app itself. There’s now an integrated terminal for running tests and builds, an in-app file editor for spot edits, a rebuilt diff viewer aimed at large changesets, and an expanded preview pane that handles HTML files and PDFs alongside local app servers. Each pane is also drag-and-drop friendly, so the layout can be arranged to suit.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In related news, Anthropic also announced Routines – a new way to set up Claude Code automations that run without an active session. A routine bundles a prompt, a repo, and any relevant connectors into a single configuration that can run on a schedule, fire from an API call, or trigger off a GitHub event such as a new pull request.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Wade Tregaskis<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I strongly suspect Claude’s Mac app is written by Claude.<\/p>\n

That’s not a compliment.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

There’s its general everyday bugginess – it frequently resets the scroll position of conversations to some arbitrary point miles back in time, for example. Or just abruptly removes focus from the text field while you’re in the middle of typing (doesn’t move it anywhere else, just defocuses). It smells, in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

But the “vibe coding” stench really wafts in when you consider that [cynically] their most important user flow – the upsell – doesn’t even work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n