Add remoteControlEnabled setting to auto-start /remote-control on session start

Status Fixed / completed

Maintainer reply ✓ Yes — bcherny

Activity 3 comments · opened Mar 22, 2026 · closed Aug 17, 2026

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (bcherny, collaborator) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Summary

There is no settings.json option to auto-enable /remote-control on session start. Users who rely on remote control every session must manually type /remote-control each time. There should be a remoteControlEnabled: true setting (mirroring the existing voiceEnabled pattern) that auto-starts the remote control server on session initialization.

Current Behavior

/remote-control must be manually typed every session
SessionStart hooks can only run shell commands, not invoke built-in slash commands
No settings.json property exists to auto-enable this feature

Expected Behavior

{
  "remoteControlEnabled": true
}

Adding this to ~/.claude/settings.json should auto-start the remote control server on every session, just like voiceEnabled: true auto-enables voice mode.

Use Case

Users who control Claude Code from a separate device (phone, tablet, another screen) need remote control active every session. Having to walk to the terminal and type /remote-control each time defeats the purpose of the feature.

Environment

OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
Claude Code: latest (CLI)

View original on GitHub ↗

3 Comments

mischacoster · 4 months ago

AFAIK, this is managed through the /config command and stored in ~/.claude.json, not in ~/.claude/settings.json.
Type /config and look for the Enable Remote Control for all sessions switch. This was introduced in the february update. (Pro or Max required)

cradsdavis-cell · 3 months ago

Bumping from stale.

Hitting this on Windows 11 / Claude Code v2.1.143. remoteControlAtStartup: true in ~/.claude/settings.json works as documented when launching via claude in the terminal — bridge auto-starts, session appears at claude.ai/code. The same setting is silently ignored by the VS Code extension launch path, so every panel session requires manually typing /remote-control.

Use case: I want a Claude Code-based EA always available via the Claude mobile app, so I can voice-talk to it on a walk. The auto-start gap forces a manual step at the keyboard before every walk, which is exactly the workflow remote control is meant to remove.

Re-filed the bug at #62149 with the code-level evidence from #53647 and an explicit note to maintainers about the dup-bot misrouting that closed #41036 and #53647 both (both wrongly auto-routed to #29929, which is a CLI /config persistence bug — unrelated to the VS Code extension launch path).

This enhancement (remoteControlEnabled as a fresh setting) and the bug (existing remoteControlAtStartup field not honored by VS Code) are complementary, not duplicates. Happy to test a fix on either path.

bcherny collaborator · 14 days ago

This exists now: set "remoteControlAtStartup": true in your user ~/.claude/settings.json (or toggle 'Enable Remote Control for all sessions' in /config) and each interactive session connects Remote Control automatically. Note it's honored from user or managed settings, not from a repo's project settings. Docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/remote-control#enable-remote-control-for-all-sessions

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