Desktop: "Connect new sessions to Remote Control" renders a three-state setting as a two-state toggle

Environment

• Claude Desktop: 1.40609.0 (f65e38), built 2026-08-27
• Claude Code CLI on same host: 2.1.233
• macOS (Apple Silicon)

Summary

remoteControlAtStartup is documented as taking three values — true, false, and default. The desktop app renders it as a two-position switch, so default and false are visually identical while behaving differently. A machine sitting at default shows the switch off while new sessions connect to Remote Control anyway.

This is not cosmetic: because the switch has no position meaning default, touching it converts an implicit default into an explicit value, and there is no way to get back to default from the desktop UI. The CLI's /config does offer default as a selectable value, so the two surfaces for one setting expose different choice sets, and only one of them can undo what the other does.

Steps to reproduce

1. On a machine with no remoteControlAtStartup key set anywhere (fresh state = default), open Settings > Claude Code. The switch reads off.
2. Start a new Code session and open the session's Remote Control control.

→ Remote Control is on, and the session reports that it connected automatically at start. The session also appears in the Claude mobile app.

1. Toggle the setting on, then off — writing an explicit false.
2. Start another new session.

→ Remote Control is now off, and the session does not appear on mobile.

Steps 1 and 3 leave the switch in the same visual position with opposite behavior.

Expected

The control distinguishes the three documented states, or the docs drop default for this surface. At minimum, entering an explicit value should be reversible from the same UI that set it.

Secondary observation

After step 3, remoteControlAtStartup was present in neither ~/.claude/settings.json nor ~/.claude.json. The Remote Control docs name the first as where to set this, and describe the desktop switch as the same toggle surfaced outside the CLI. I did not locate where the desktop app does persist it, so this may be intended, but as written the docs imply a shared store that isn't shared.

Docs: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/remote-control#enable-remote-control-for-all-sessions