Navigating the Claude desktop app: Chat, Cowork, Code

The Claude desktop app gives you three ways to work with Claude: Chat, Cowork, and Code.

Chat is the same Claude you know from claude.ai, plus quick entry, screenshots, dictation, and connectors that come from running natively on your computer. Cowork gives Claude the reach and the room to do more. This broader scope allows it to conduct more thorough research and analysis, and produce more complex documents and deliverables. Code is for building software, from writing and testing code to deploying it.

Cowork and Code run on the same engine. Both are Claude Code underneath — local to your machine, capable of independent work, able to spin up sub-agents and sustain long tasks. This allows Claude to work through larger tasks on its own, like research and writing or building software.

Each mode is designed around the work it serves, showing you what matters and giving you control where you need it.

Chat

Ask questions, brainstorm, draft, work through problems. If you've used claude.ai, this works the same way, with a few things that come from running natively on your computer:

• Quick entry. Double-tap the Option key on Mac to pull up Claude over whatever you're working on. It responds in a compact window that stays on top as you switch between apps. You never have to leave what you're doing to ask a question.
• Screenshots and window sharing. Capture a screenshot or share a window so Claude sees exactly what you're looking at. Faster than describing what's on your screen, and more precise. (Mac)
• Voice input. Talk through a problem instead of typing. Useful when you're thinking out loud, away from your keyboard, or working through something where speaking is faster than writing. (Mac)
• Desktop connectors. Connect local tools and services through connectors so Claude can work with other tools on your machine.

Try it out when:

• You're staring at an unfamiliar dashboard. Double-tap Option, drag your cursor over the window to screenshot it, and ask "what do these metrics mean?" Claude answers in the overlay while the dashboard stays in view.
• You're in between meetings and want to think through how to structure a presentation. Open quick entry, switch to voice, and talk it through. Claude drafts an outline from what you said.
• You've been jotting down ideas for a product launch across Apple Notes for weeks. You add the Notes connector from Settings and ask Claude: "Pull together everything in my notes about the Osprey launch, figure out where I left things half-finished, and check my other connected tools for anything that fills in the gaps." Claude reads your notes on your machine, pieces together what you have, and follows up where you trailed off.

Cowork

Claude Cowork is built for work that takes real effort: pulling information from many sources, making sense of it, and producing something finished. Claude can multitask, tackling different parts of a project at a time, so it has the scope to draw from more sources and the stamina to see things through. Thorough research briefs, cross-source financial analysis, end-to-end contract review, polished slide decks from material spread across sources.

Before starting, Claude often asks a short set of questions to pin down what you need: scope, format, constraints. It builds a plan you can review in the sidebar. As it works, you see the task come together: sources it's drawing from, files taking shape, progress through the plan. You can run multiple tasks at once, each in its own conversation, and switch between them from the sidebar.

• Folder access. Give Claude a folder on your computer and it reads what's there, figures out what's relevant, and saves finished work back to the same place. You can also upload files, paste content into the conversation, or connect tools that pull in what Claude needs.
• Browser use. Connect Claude in Chrome and Claude can navigate websites, interact with pages, and pull what it finds directly into the task it's working on. This is how Cowork does things like check competitor pricing across ten sites or gather data from pages that don't have an API. See use cases and a step-by-step tutorial.
• Plugins. Plugins give Claude capabilities it doesn't have on its own: pulling live financial data, searching your company's internal knowledge base, or working within a specific compliance framework. Browse and add them from the Cowork interface to fit the task.
• Protected environment. Cowork runs in a contained space on your computer. Claude can read, create, and edit files within the folders you share, but can't access anything outside them.

Try it out when:

• You want to query all your tools like you would a database. Ask "what did we decide about pricing last quarter?" and Cowork finds the answer across meeting notes, slide decks, email, and Slack threads.
• You're researching a new market, scoping competitors, evaluating tools. For any research that might span multiple tabs with hard to extract information, Cowork visits the sites, reads the reports, pulls the pricing, and delivers a structured brief with sources, without you opening a single browser tab.
• You need to parse through large documents where the details matter: contracts, financial reports, meeting transcripts. Cowork reads every page, cross-references across the full set, and pulls out the patterns that only emerge from reading all of them. Review fifty like you'd review five.

See more examples with step-by-step walkthroughs.

Cowork is currently a research preview, available to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users, with new capabilities being added regularly.

Code

Code puts a full development environment inside the desktop app, powered by Claude Code. Claude works directly in your codebase: reading what's there, writing and modifying code, running commands. Visual diffs show what changed, a built-in terminal shows commands as they run, and git tracks every version so you can always roll back.

Where Cowork runs in a contained workspace limited to the folders you share, Code runs directly in your project with full access to your file system, terminal, and development tools.

You choose where work happens:

Local: You select a folder on your computer and Claude works directly with those files. Because it runs on your machine, Claude can read your project, access local tools, and run a development server you can preview in your browser.

Remote: You connect a GitHub repository and Claude works in a cloud environment. Sessions continue even if you close the app, so you can start a big refactor and check back later. Good for larger codebases or when you want to keep development off your local machine.

Three interaction modes let you control how much Claude does on its own:

• Ask: Claude proposes every change and waits for your approval. You review a visual diff and accept or reject before anything is modified.
• Code: Claude applies file changes automatically but checks before running terminal commands.
• Plan: Claude outlines its full approach before touching anything. A dedicated plan viewer lets you review and revisit the strategy as work progresses.

You can run multiple sessions across projects and filter them by status (Active or Archived) and environment (Local or Cloud) from the sidebar.

The Code tab is rolling out to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise users. For sessions, permissions, hooks, skills, and other configuration, see the Claude Code desktop documentation.

Comparing the three modes on Desktop

Get started

• Download Claude for Mac or Windows
• Cowork and the Code tab require a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise subscription
• The Code tab is still rolling out and may not appear for all users yet.