Anthropic Brings Claude Cowork to Phones for Max Subscribers

Anthropic launched Claude Cowork on phones, giving users a way to direct its knowledge-work agent from Android and iOS. Cowork debuted as a desktop app earlier this year, and after an expansion in the spring, the company now lets people manage it from a new Cowork tab in the Claude app's sidebar. The update does not automate tasks on the phone itself. Instead, it lets you keep tabs on what Claude is doing on your computer, and it can now run tasks in the background even when the machine is not online.

Key Takeaways

• Claude Cowork is now available on mobile and web, rolling out first to Max subscribers before reaching other plans in the coming weeks.

• Sessions sync across devices, so a task started at a desk can be checked from a phone and picked up later, and Cowork can run scheduled work in the background with no device online.

• When a task needs a decision only a person can make, Claude surfaces the question to the phone, and nothing is finalized without review.

The design points to how Anthropic wants Cowork seen: less as a coding tool and more as an administrative teammate that runs in the background, moves across devices, and asks for input when a call is yours to make. One example from the company sets Monday client prep for 6 a.m., with Claude working through email threads, transcripts, and recent news, building a briefing document, and leaving a follow-up email drafted but unsent for review over coffee.

Human in the Loop

Control stays with the user. When Claude reaches a step that needs human judgment, it sends the question to the phone, and the person approves before anything moves forward. "Nothing ships until you've reviewed and approved it," Anthropic said. The company plans to unify Cowork with its chatbot so people can chat with Claude and hand it computer tasks from a single interface, a change that will land first on the web client and desktop app. Projects and artifacts, which group chats and files and let Claude build small apps and games, will come together as well.

Where the Value Shows Up

Alongside the launch, Anthropic released usage data that reframes what the tool is for. In a sample of 1.2 million Cowork sessions across more than 600,000 organizations, software development accounted for just 8.7% of use. The largest category, at 33.4%, was business process work such as pulling scattered updates into a report or reconciling spreadsheets, followed by content creation and copywriting at 16.4%. Anthropic describes these as the work around the work, the connective tasks that keep a business running but rarely define a single role.

The move fits a broader race to push AI agents beyond chat into the surfaces where work happens. Anthropic's Cowork already shaped Microsoft's own Copilot Cowork, which runs Claude in Microsoft's cloud, and the company has been packaging pre-built agents for finance, HR, and legal teams. Cowork itself grew out of a pattern Anthropic noticed, with people repurposing its coding tool for general office tasks. The push extends into workplace apps too, from connections to Slack, Figma, and Box, as the line between chatbot and agent keeps thinning. For finance, HR, and communications teams, the usage data suggests the agent conversation is no longer only about developers.