Claude Cowork comes to web and mobile, with sessions that run while your laptop is closed
Claude Cowork is now in beta on web and iOS/Android for Max plan users, with cloud-run sessions, doubled usage limits through August 5, and new M365 write access.
Update, 8 July 2026: Anthropic extends Claude Fable 5 access for all paid plans through July 12
Just hours before the original July 7 deadline, Anthropic extended free Claude Fable 5 access for all paid subscribers through July 12, 2026, at 11:59 PM PT. No action is needed; the extension applies automatically to Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans.
The usage rules from the July 1 redeployment remain in place. Paid subscribers can use Fable 5 for up to 50% of their weekly usage limit at no extra cost. Beyond that cap, continuing with Fable 5 requires enabling usage credits, while the rest of your weekly quota remains available for other Claude models.
After July 12, Fable 5 exits standard subscription limits entirely. Users who want to keep using it will need usage credits, billed at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, the highest published rate for any generally available Claude model. To enable credits, go to Settings > Usage in your Claude account. API access continues at standard rates regardless.
Anthropic has described the credit-billing shift as a temporary capacity measure, with a Claude Code lead engineer confirming publicly that the company intends to return Fable 5 to standard subscriptions once compute capacity allows. The extension followed visible customer frustration, though usage caps remain a significant concern for heavy users.
For Max plan subscribers using Claude Cowork, Fable 5 remains available across web, desktop, mobile, and Claude Code through the deadline.
Claude Cowork is no longer a desktop-only tool
Claude Cowork launched in January as a desktop app, and a fairly narrow one at that. Six months on, Anthropic has rolled it out to web and mobile (iOS and Android), added cloud-run sessions so your work continues after you close your laptop, and quietly upgraded the Microsoft 365 connector with write access. Beta access is rolling out over the coming weeks, starting with Max plan subscribers.
That is a significant shift in what Cowork actually is.
What changed, specifically
The headline feature is remote sessions. Previously, Cowork ran on your machine. Now, in beta, Claude’s work runs on Anthropic’s servers in an isolated, temporary environment. That environment can’t reach your home or company network, and it’s removed when the session ends.
The practical effect: you can start a task on your desktop, leave for a meeting, and check on it from your phone. Scheduled tasks run whether or not any of your devices are on. If Claude hits a decision point it can’t resolve alone, it pushes a notification to your phone asking for input. Drafts don’t send until you approve them.
Chat and Cowork now share a single home in the Claude app, so projects and artefacts from both live in one place. Anthropic is also extending its doubled Cowork usage limits through August 5 to mark the rollout.
Desktop still has an edge. Local file access, browser use, and computer use still require the Claude Desktop app to be open. Remote sessions can reach locally connected folders, but only while desktop is running and only within the permissions you’ve already set.
Why this matters more than it might sound
When Cowork launched, it was billed as an agent for people who don’t write code. Anthropic has now published usage data that shows just how accurate that framing was. Across 1.2 million sampled sessions from more than 600,000 organisations between May 11 and 31, software development accounted for just 8.7% of Cowork usage.
The largest category, at 33.4%, was business process work: pulling scattered updates into a single report, reconciling spreadsheets, building onboarding checklists. Content creation and copywriting came second at 16.4%. Finance, HR, and operations roles dominated the usage patterns.
Anthropic describes roughly half of all Cowork usage as “the work around the work” — the reporting, the summarising, the prep that sits alongside someone’s actual job title but rarely appears in a job description. That’s what the mobile and web release is aimed at. The finance analyst who wants the variance memo drafted before they get to their desk. The account manager who wants the client briefing built from call transcripts while they’re in transit.
The move to mobile and web makes those workflows genuinely asynchronous. You don’t need to babysit a desktop session.
The Microsoft 365 connector now has write access
Alongside the Cowork update, Anthropic has upgraded the Microsoft 365 connector from read-only to read-write (with write tools enabled).
Claude can now draft and send email, manage drafts and calendar events, update mailbox settings, and create and update files in OneDrive and SharePoint. Read and search tools work exactly as before. Teams remains read-only for now.
A few things worth knowing if you manage this for an organisation:
Claude mirrors each user’s existing Microsoft 365 permissions. Nobody gets access through Claude to anything they couldn’t already reach directly in Microsoft 365.
If your tenant was already using the connector before write tools launched, write access is blocked by default. A Microsoft Entra Global Administrator needs to go to Organisation settings, find the Microsoft 365 connector, and approve the updated permission set. It’s a one-time action per tenant.
What this means for you
If you’re on the Max plan, beta access is rolling out now. Look for Cowork in the sidebar of the Claude app on iPhone, iPad, Android, or at claude.ai. The doubled usage limits run through August 5.
If you’ve been avoiding Cowork because you couldn’t install the desktop app, web access removes that barrier. You won’t get the full feature set (local file access still needs the desktop app), but the core agent workflows are available.
If you manage Microsoft 365 for your organisation, the write access upgrade is the part that needs your attention. Review what the updated connector permissions include, decide whether write tools are appropriate for your users, and action the admin approval if you want them enabled. The setup guide covers the specifics.
If you’re on a plan other than Max, Anthropic has said broader rollout is coming. No specific dates yet.
The broader picture here is that Anthropic is moving Cowork from a desktop experiment into something that can fit into how knowledge workers actually operate: across devices, asynchronously, with a human still making the calls that matter.