Claude can now keep working on your Mac while you're away

The dream of someone else working instead of you while you enjoy the finer things in life has just become a bit more real.

Anthropic announced a new feature for Claude Cowork and Claude Code, enabling the smart assistant to use your computer on its own while you're away.

So, if Claude needs a certain tool to finish a task, it can point, click, and navigate on your screen to get what it needs, including opening files, using a browser, and running dev tools.

The feature, which requires no setup, is available in research preview for Claude Pro and Max subscribers, and only on Mac computers.

Anthropic pointed out that the tool works particularly well with Dispatch, a tool that lets you assign Claude (its desktop version, to be precise) tasks from your phone.

This sounds awfully close to the type of automation that's recently been on the rise with tools like OpenClaw becoming immensely popular, but it's far more restrictive than that. While OpenClaw is typically given full reign over a computer, Claude's version will prioritize using connectors to service such as Slack and Google Calendar, and when it decides it has to open an app directly, it will ask for permission before accessing a new app.

Despite these safety measures, users should be very careful before handing Claude (or any smart assistant) full access to their computers. As Anthropic itself puts it, "Claude can make mistakes, and while we continue to improve our safeguards, threats are constantly evolving." For more detail on what Claude can and cannot do using this tool, go here.