Claude Code on your phone

Where does the code actually run?

Every option below fits one of three answers, and the answer decides almost everything else. The code can run in the cloud, on a machine that keeps running while you are away. It can run on your own computer with your phone as a remote control. Or your phone can be a terminal looking through a tunnel at your computer. The first keeps working when your laptop is shut. The other two need that machine to stay awake, and they give you the files, tools and settings you actually work with.

The first route has a practical consequence: Anthropic’s cloud sessions clone your repository from a host they can reach, which in practice means GitHub. The other two keep a session running on your machine, so the question there is what happens when the laptop sleeps.

What does Anthropic offer for Claude Code on a phone?

Anthropic has put its own answer inside the Claude app for iOS and Android, and the documentation is careful about what that app is: a client for Claude Code sessions rather than a place where code runs. There is no separate Claude Code app. Cloud sessions and Remote Control live in its Code tab, and Dispatch is a task you message in the app.

Cloud sessions, run by Anthropic

A cloud session runs on cloud infrastructure, Anthropic-managed by default, and keeps running after you close your laptop. You can start one from the Code tab, from claude.ai/code in a browser, from the desktop app, or from a terminal with claude --cloud, and pick it up on any of the others. Anthropic says cloud sessions are available on Pro, Max and Team plans, and for Enterprise users with premium or Chat plus Claude Code seats. They count toward the same plan limits, and there is no separate charge for the cloud machine.

Remote Control

Remote Control runs the session on your computer and gives your phone a window into it. Claude keeps running locally the whole time, so code execution and filesystem access stay on your machine, and your MCP servers, project configuration and file paths are all available as usual. You start it with claude remote-control, with --remote-control on an interactive session, or with /remote-control in a session that is already open, then pair the phone by scanning a QR code or by picking the session in the app. It is available on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and not with an API key.

Dispatch and projects

Dispatch is a task you message in the app, which the Desktop app then turns into a Code session on your computer. Anthropic says it requires a Pro or Max plan and is not available on Team or Enterprise. A project is the other shape: one conversation where Claude coordinates parallel threads of work and reports back.

What the app cannot do

Commands that only exist in the terminal interface, such as /plugin and /resume, do not work from the app. Permission modes are limited too: Anthropic’s cloud sessions offer Accept edits, Plan and Auto, and Remote Control sessions offer Manual, Accept edits, Plan and Auto, and Bypass permissions cannot be selected from the app at all. Push notifications arrive when a long task finishes or when a decision is waiting, behind two toggles in /config.

The three flags are on the machine this page was written on, run today: claude --version answers 2.1.308 (Claude Code), and claude --help lists --cloud, --remote-control and --teleport. The app's behaviour comes from Anthropic's own pages, read the same day: we did not install the app on a phone to write this.

How do you reach a session running on your own computer?

Remote Control is one answer and it is closed in one respect: it belongs to Anthropic's app and needs a claude.ai subscription. Three other routes reach the same machine without going through Anthropic's client, and the difference between them is what your phone is allowed to see.

A web interface served from your computer

Omniscio takes this route. Turn on Mobile Access in Settings → Remote Access and the desktop app serves a mobile-sized version of its own interface over your network, so a phone opens the session list, the inbox and the questions waiting on you. It is the same app you already have open on the desktop, laid out for a thumb.

The default is private, and that is the part worth understanding. Omniscio does not ship a tunnel of its own. When Tailscale is installed and signed in on both the computer and the phone, Omniscio registers its address with tailscale serve and verifies the registration, which gives you an HTTPS address only devices signed in to your own Tailscale account can open. Without Tailscale the same Wi-Fi works, after you switch the server's bind host from loopback to all interfaces. Reaching it from a device that cannot run Tailscale means turning on Allow access from the public internet in the Advanced pane, which is off by default, desktop only, and asks you to confirm.

Access is token-gated, the pairing card offers a QR code, and the page carries a web app manifest, so Android Chrome can install it to the home screen and taps reopen it in its own window. Push notifications can reach the phone when a session needs you. The first payload is deliberately small, a few kilobytes rather than the whole desktop state, because a phone on a train should not wait for the desktop's data to load.

What it is built for is a decision, not a transcript. The library describes the page as the place to approve a plan, answer a question, acknowledge a rate limit or send a one-line reply, and says it opens on the inbox rather than on a session. That is the difference from mirroring one terminal: on a screen this size, what you want first is which of your sessions is waiting for you and which has failed, not the last forty lines one of them printed.

Two limits. The pane is called Mobile Access in its heading and Remote Access in the sidebar, which is confusing until you have seen both. And a self-hosted page is only as reachable as your network: if the desktop is off, the page is gone.

An app that wraps the session on your machine

Its own site describes Happy as an open-source harness, MIT licensed, that orchestrates Claude Code, Codex and Grok in one app, with desktop builds for macOS, Windows and Linux and an end-to-end encrypted mobile app. It is free and open source, and the CLI route is npm install -g happy followed by happy claude instead of claude: the session starts in your terminal, and the same session is then on your phone. Their own line is that you can resume that session or start a new one from your phone, with no desktop app required.

An SSH client and a tunnel you bring

This is the oldest route and still the most complete: run a terminal app on the phone and SSH into the machine, or into a machine you already reach. Termius publishes clients for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. You get a real terminal, which means every command works, including the ones the other routes cannot offer. What you give up is everything the other routes add: no session list, no approvals laid out for a screen, and no notifications unless you set them up yourself. You also carry the network problem, because a phone on cellular cannot reach a machine on your home network without a tunnel of some kind.

Which route fits which person?

A reasonable order to try them: if your repository is already on GitHub and the work can be handed over rather than supervised, Anthropic’s cloud sessions are the least machinery.

If the work needs your local files or your local tools, Remote Control is the shortest path, and Omniscio's mobile access is the one that also shows your other sessions and the inbox. If you need commands no app offers, use an SSH client and accept that you are maintaining the tunnel.

One thing is missing from that table, and it decides the answer for someone running a lot of agents: what you see when you arrive. Omniscio’s mobile page opens on its inbox, which lists the sessions waiting on you across the desktop — the thing you want when the question is which of twelve sessions needs you. The guide to running many coding agents at once covers what changes on the desktop side at that scale.

Portability is the other thing to check before committing. The apps above change their plans and their platform lists more often than they change their mechanics, so read the vendor's own page rather than a roundup, including this one.