6 min · +110 XP
Claude In Your Pocket — It's Just an App
You installed WhatsApp once. This is exactly that.
By the end of this lesson
You'll control the Claude working on your computer — from a chat on your phone.
Nope. No hacker apps, no tunnels, no network setup. There is an official Claude app, it has a Code section, and it remote-controls the Claude Code on your computer. If you can use WhatsApp, you already know how to use this.
The whole setup
- 1Install the Claude app on your phone (App Store / Google Play) — the same way you installed WhatsApp.
- 2Sign in with the SAME account you use for Claude Code.
- 3Before you leave the house: start Claude in your project and type /rc — that switches on remote control. (One-time: in /config you can turn it on for all future sessions.)
- 4Leave the terminal window OPEN, and stop the computer from sleeping — a laptop with a closed lid does nothing. Easiest way, the course's usual way: ask Claude 'change my settings so you keep working while I'm out' (plugged in, lid open, never sleep).
- 5Open the app → the Code section. Your computer's sessions are the chats with the little computer icon. (Ignore anything offering to 'Connect GitHub' — that's a different, cloud way of working.)
- 6Don't see your sessions? At your computer, type /rc in Claude — that IS the linking step.
You message your relatives on WhatsApp, right? This is the same motion: open a chat, write what you want — in your own language — and send. Except this contact actually does the work: it builds, fixes and finishes things on your computer while you're out.
You're on the train, in a café, in bed. A thought hits: 'I want a tool that does X.' You open the app, text Claude like you'd text a friend, and by the time you're home it's built. Your computer became a worker you carry in your pocket.
What do you need to control Claude Code from your phone?
Author
Evgeny Arsentyev
PhD · Chief Product Officer at a healthtech company