Desktop app: allow remote session *starts* on a machine, with a device picker in the mobile app
Not a duplicate of #29006. That request was about making Desktop-hosted sessions
visible from the phone, and it shipped as Settings > Claude Code > Enable remote. This asks for the opposite direction: starting a new session
control by default
on one of my machines from the phone, without touching that machine first.
What I would like
- In Claude Desktop: a per-machine checkbox, e.g. *"Allow remote session starts
on this device"*. Ticking it registers the machine as available, nothing else to
install or maintain.
- In the Claude mobile app: a list of every machine where I ticked that box. Pick
a machine, pick one of its known projects, start a session there.
- In the sidebar, group remote sessions by machine. Today every remote session
lands in the catch-all Other group, so sessions from my server, my desktop and my
bot PC are mixed into one list. Instead: one collapsible group per machine, named
the way that machine is named, with a small remote/device icon next to it - and the
same + button the local project groups already have, which starts a session on
that machine.
No filesystem browsing from the phone, deliberately. The phone should only offer
the project folders that machine already has - the ones in the Desktop app's own
project list, where I have started sessions before. Picking an arbitrary path from a
phone would be a permissions problem, and it isn't what I need: the folders I work in
are always the same handful. A machine with no projects yet simply offers nothing,
and I set it up once at the machine.
Why
I run Claude Code on three machines: a game server, my desktop, and a bot PC. Right
now the only way to start a session on any of them from my phone is claude in a terminal on that machine. So I first have to remote in (RDP /
remote-control
Tailscale) to launch the very thing that is supposed to spare me from remoting in.
And if a machine rebooted and no server process is running, the phone is useless.
I don't want to run and maintain an autostart entry, service, or terminal window per
machine for this. A checkbox in the app I already have open is the whole point.
What exists today
| | starts new sessions remotely | needs a process running |
|---|---|---|
| Enable remote control by default (Desktop) | no, only shares what I started locally | no |
| claude remote-control (CLI server mode) | yes, on demand | yes, a terminal on that machine |
The Desktop checkbox already covers half of this. Extending it to "this machine
accepts remote session starts" would close the gap, and the UI pattern is already
there: the sidebar groups local projects and gives each one a +. Doing the same
for each remote machine - name, device icon, + - would make it obvious, and it
beats today's single Other bucket even for people who never start a session
remotely.
3 Comments
+1 — hit exactly this tonight on macOS, Claude Code 2.1.267, Claude Max.
What I want, in one line: open the Code tab on my iPhone and see what I see on my Mac — my projects, my chats, my names. Nothing more.
What it actually cost. To make seven project directories reachable from the phone I ended up installing seven LaunchAgents, each running
claude remote-controlin one directory. The Desktop app was running and signed in on that same Mac the whole time — same account, same subscription — and could not start a session. Your checkbox proposal would have replaced all of it.Two edges that make the CLI workaround worse than it looks:
Enable Remote Control? (y/n)reads fromprocess.stdin. Under launchd there is no stdin, the promise never resolves, and the process stays alive. Solaunchctl listreports a healthy PID and the install looks successful. Four of my seven servers sat hung like that; the only way to tell was reading the log files. Still present in 2.1.267.--create-session-in-dirdefaults to on, so every server injects an empty session with a generated name into the same list as real chats. On a machine with several project directories the session list is mostly noise on first launch.On your sidebar point: the grouping already exists on claude.ai/code for local projects — one group per directory with a "New session" button. The iOS Code tab does not have it; it shows one flat list sorted by recency, so which directory a chat belongs to is invisible. Bringing the web's grouping to mobile would fix that half independently of the remote-start work.
Related: #91592 (idle session cannot be resumed from the phone) is the other half of why this feels unreliable — whether a chat works depends on whether a process happened to be left running.
My workflow right now is: every time my machine reboots, I have a (windows) TaskScheduler task that launches claude remote-control servers in every repo that I commonly do work in. Currently, this keeps a terminal tab open for each of these repos. Which repos they are varies over time, and the cost of this maintenance just feels like busy-work.
Codex already supports this to some degree.
In an ideal world, I would want to say something like "any directory under
c:/ws,d:/ws" is a project I authorize starting a session in.+1. The desktop app seems to have this built in already: it has a "This computer is now available from your other devices" mode (Remote Control folders), and #100284 and #101132 are from people using it. On my Mac (Claude Max) it has never appeared, so it looks like a staged rollout. Please roll it out to all accounts, or say when it's coming.
Anthropic support suggested
claude remote-controlin a terminal as the workaround, but it isn't a real substitute:Claude desktop 2.37337.1, macOS 27.0.1.