Claude Cowork launched as a desktop app in January, but starting Tuesday, it's available on the web and mobile for Max subscribers. With the update, users can start tasks at their desk, get status updates on their phone, and pick up the finished product later — even if their laptop is closed.
Claude Cowork launched as a desktop app in January, but starting Tuesday, it's available on the web and mobile for Max subscribers. With the update, users can start tasks at their desk, get status updates on their phone, and pick up the finished product later — even if their laptop is closed.
This expansion is a signal that Anthropic wants Cowork to be perceived less as a coding tool “for dummies” and more as an agent-like administrative colleague — someone who can work in the background, accompany the user across devices, and only ask for help when there is a need for a decision that only a human can make, writes TechCrunch.
The company notes that in addition to the advantages of a single, specific interface, launching Cowork as a multi-platform application means that the AI agent can continue to perform tasks in the background, even if the device is offline.
Here’s an example from Anthropic: “Schedule a client meeting prep for Monday at 6am: Claude will work through email chains, transcripts, and breaking news, prepare a briefing document, and leave a draft of the next email written but unsent. Review it over a cup of coffee.”
The desktop app will remain the primary place for deep, focused work, where Claude has access to local files and a browser. However, the release of Cowork on web and mobile platforms means that it will also be available to people who haven’t installed the app. Anthropic says that initially, chat and Cowork will be combined on the web and PC, with projects and artifacts co-existing in both interfaces.
Anthropic has also released its first data on Cowork usage, showing that the most obvious use case for the tool is the “work around work” that keeps companies running. This refers to what Anthropic calls “tasks that are part of a huge spectrum of jobs, but are rarely anyone’s primary responsibility.”
The study analyzed 1.2 million anonymized and aggregated Cowork sessions across more than 600,000 organizations during the last two weeks of May.
The largest category (33.4%) is operational business processes: compiling disparate updates into a single report, creating onboarding checklists, and reconciling spreadsheets. These tasks are typical for finance, HR, and administrative functions, according to Anthropic.
The next largest category (16.4%) is content creation and copywriting: tasks like writing drafts, preparing presentations, social media posts, business proposals, and other communications work typically performed by marketing professionals and management.
In comparison, software development accounted for only 8.7% of Cowork's total usage.
“While coding is understandably still one of the most talked-about uses of AI, the use of AI for everyday business tasks is growing rapidly, and the types of tasks where people find it most useful are becoming clearer,” Anthropic said. “Our goal is to make this research a reference for people trying to understand how to integrate AI products into their daily work, and to show where the most value lies.”
