Claude desktop app

Worth its own entry for one reason: the desktop app is not just the web app in a window. Several products are desktop-first or desktop-only, and a rollout plan that assumes browser parity will hit that wall.

What is desktop-first or desktop-only

Product	Desktop story
Cowork	Primary surface is Claude Desktop for macOS. Web and mobile are in beta.
Claude Science	Desktop only — macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux. No Windows build.
Claude Code	Full desktop app: visual diff review, side-by-side sessions, scheduled tasks, cloud sessions.
Desktop scheduled tasks	Run on your machine with access to local files — the thing cloud routines cannot do.

Note the platform matrix is not uniform: Claude Code Desktop runs on macOS and Windows (x64 and ARM64), while Claude Science runs on macOS and Linux. There is no single “desktop” answer.

Why local access is the differentiator

Everything above comes down to reaching your machine — your files, your tools, your compute. A browser tab cannot read your local repository or drive your local cluster. That is why the products that do things rather than answer things keep landing on desktop first.

What this page does not claim

Per-platform feature parity within the desktop app itself, and minimum OS versions, are documented upstream and not reproduced here.