Anthropic has brought Claude Cowork to the web and to phones, not just the desktop app, and moved the sessions into the cloud so they keep running after you close your laptop. The web and mobile access is a beta that starts with the Max plan and reaches the other paid tiers over the coming weeks. Here is what actually shipped on 7 July, how the remote model changes what Cowork can do, and whether you can use it today.
Claude Cowork is the part of Claude that takes on the work around the work: you describe an outcome, and it moves across your files, inbox, calendar and the web until the job is done. Until this week it lived on your desktop, which meant the task stopped the moment you shut the lid. On 7 July, Anthropic put Cowork on web and mobile and moved the sessions onto its own servers, so the work no longer depends on your machine staying awake. The move itself is not the interesting part; what matters is what it lets you stop doing.
What Anthropic Shipped on 7 July
You can now start a Cowork session from three places instead of one: the web at claude.ai, the iOS and Android apps, and the desktop app you already had. The sessions run remotely, on Anthropic’s servers, which is the change that makes the rest possible. Chat and Cowork now share a single home as well, so handing Claude a task begins from the same message box as an ordinary conversation. To mark the launch, Anthropic has doubled Cowork usage limits through 5 August, which gives you room to test bigger jobs before the normal ceilings return.
The Real Shift Is Work That Continues Without You
Here is the thing that actually matters. Because the session runs in the cloud rather than on your laptop, closing the lid no longer stops it. You can start a task at your desk, check on it from your phone on the train, and collect the finished output wherever you land. Scheduled tasks go one step further: they now run with no device online at all. You can set a task to build your Monday client briefing at six in the morning, and Claude will work through the email threads, transcripts and recent news, assemble the document, and leave the follow-up email drafted but unsent, ready for you to review over coffee. When Claude reaches a decision only you can make, it asks, and the question arrives as a notification on your phone. Nothing ships until you have approved it.
Where the Desktop App Still Earns Its Place
However, the cloud does not reach everything. Anything that touches your own computer still needs the desktop app open on that machine: reading and writing your local files, driving your browser through Claude in Chrome, or controlling your screen directly. Live artifacts, the interactive previews Cowork can build, also remain desktop-only for now. The practical rule is simple: if the task lives entirely in the cloud and your connected tools, your phone is enough; if it needs to open a folder on your hard drive, the desktop app has to be running. Anthropic is candid that this is a beta, and some features are not yet available on web and mobile.
Who Gets It, and What It Costs
Cowork itself is available on every paid Claude plan, which means Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. The new web and mobile access, though, is rolling out gradually and starts with Max, widening to the other tiers over the following weeks; if you are on Pro and do not see it yet, that is expected. There is no separate charge for using it, but it is worth setting expectations honestly: Cowork draws on your plan’s usage allowance faster than ordinary chat does, because multi-step tasks are simply more compute-intensive. The doubled limits through 5 August soften that for now.
Whether It Is Worth Turning On Today
So, should you bother? If you are on the Max plan and you already hand Cowork real, multi-step work, yes, turn it on now: the overnight scheduled tasks and the approvals-on-your-phone are the two features that change your day, and you have doubled limits until August to lean on them. If you are on Pro, there is nothing to do but wait a week or two for the rollout to reach you. And if you do not yet delegate genuine tasks to Cowork, putting it on your phone will not start that habit for you; the place to begin is a single job already sitting on your plate, not the surface you run it from.