On July 7 (US time), Anthropic announced that Claude Cowork, its AI workspace, is now available on the web and on mobile (iOS and Android). Previously limited to a desktop app, Cowork now spans multiple devices: you can check the progress of a task started on your PC from your phone, and the AI keeps working even when every one of your devices is offline. The beta is rolling out to Max plan subscribers first, with additional plans to follow.

Tasks Keep Running Even With Your Devices Closed

This update rests on three pillars. The first is session syncing across devices. You can kick off a task at your desk, check its progress from your phone while on the move, and retrieve the finished output from any other device.

The second is background execution that continues even when none of your devices are online. Because tasks run on the server side, closing the app entirely does not stop them. Scheduled execution is also supported: set up client meeting prep for 6 a.m. on Monday, and Claude will work through email threads, transcripts, and recent news, assemble a briefing document, and leave a follow-up email drafted but unsent. All you have to do is review the results over your morning coffee.

The third is approval notifications for moments that call for human judgment. When Claude hits a decision point it cannot resolve on its own, the question is pushed to your phone. Anthropic says nothing is finalized until the user has reviewed and approved it, emphasizing a design in which humans hold the final say over an autonomously working AI.

Beta Starts With the Max Plan; Desktop Remains the Most Capable

The beta will roll out to Max plan users over the next several weeks before expanding to other plans. The desktop app remains the fully featured version, with access to local files and the browser, while the web and mobile versions serve as complements. That said, the web version runs in a browser, so it can be used even in workplaces where IT policies restrict app installation — significantly lowering the barrier to adoption at work.

The interface has also been consolidated: on web and desktop, chat and Cowork now share a single home screen, and projects and artifacts carry over between both modes. As an adoption incentive, the doubled usage limits for Cowork have been extended through August 5.

Usage Data Reveals "the Work Around the Work"

Alongside the launch, Anthropic published some revealing usage statistics. Classifying roughly 1.2 million anonymized sessions sampled from more than 600,000 organizations between May 11 and 31, the company found that the most common use case was not software development but business process and operations work, which accounted for 33.4 percent of the total. This bucket includes pulling scattered progress updates into a single report, building onboarding checklists, and reconciling spreadsheets.

Second place went to content creation and copywriting — drafts, slide decks, proposals — at 16.4 percent. These top two categories alone make up nearly half of all usage. Software development, by contrast, accounted for just 8.7 percent, followed by DevOps and infrastructure at 7 percent, research at 6.4 percent, data analysis at 5.8 percent, document processing and extraction at 4.1 percent, and sales-related operations at 4 percent.

Anthropic describes these use cases as "the work around the work" — tasks that appear in no one's job description yet arise in every department and are essential to moving projects forward, like writing status updates or prepping materials. The company cites examples such as a lawyer delegating document formatting to Cowork while reserving legal judgment for themselves, or a hiring manager letting the AI consolidate interview feedback so they can spend more time talking with candidates. The picture that emerges is one of AI taking over the chores around professional expertise, rather than the expertise itself.

Summary

With its expansion to web and mobile, Claude Cowork has evolved from a desktop-bound AI agent into one that keeps working across any device. The three new capabilities — session syncing, server-side background execution, and approval notifications on your phone — all support a workflow in which you delegate to AI and simply review the results. As the usage data shows, Cowork's main arena is not coding but the everyday work that keeps businesses running, making this a step that brings AI agents closer to workers outside engineering as well. The beta is rolling out now starting with the Max plan, and the doubled usage limits have been extended through August 5.