Claude 2.0: the 11 desktop app updates

How to use this guide

This is the full guide to Claude 2.0: the 11 biggest updates to the Claude desktop app, in the order the original video covers them. Every prompt, resource and shortcut is here. Prompts are word for word, with [brackets] where your own task or topic goes, alongside the exact setting names, the menu paths and the tables of which plan gets what.

The fastest setup: send this guide (or the PDF) to your Claude and ask it to set things up for you, or to teach you the features you aren’t using yet. To do it yourself, take one section per update, then tick off the checklist at the end. Every prompt sits in its own box, ready to copy.

Plans and features checked on 27 October 2026. Anthropic changes them often.

I’ve attached a guide to the new Claude desktop app. Go through it with me one section at a time. For each section, tell me in one sentence what it does for me, do the parts you can do yourself, and tell me exactly where to click for the settings I need to switch on myself. Ask me before you change or turn off anything.

Start here: Only Chat and Code now

Open the new Claude desktop app and the top bar shows just Chat and Code. Since September, Cowork lives inside Chat.

To get the most out of Claude, use Claude Code: click Code at the top of the app. It’s Anthropic’s flagship product, so that’s where the best and most frequent updates land.

Don’t let the word “code” put you off. The name is misleading. Anyone can use Claude Code, because you simply prompt and steer Claude in plain English. Becoming a developer isn’t required.

Update 1: The new interface

The session rail is the panel on the right of the window: a stack of cards that tell you what’s happening in this session.

Turn it on

Can’t see it? Click Show session rail at the top right of the app and it opens. Hide session rail closes it.

Remote Control: carry on from your phone

Flip the Remote Control switch in the Environment card and you can pick up this exact session on your phone. Start a task at your desk and check in on it while you’re out. Remote Control is on Pro and Max. On Team and Enterprise, an owner has to enable it first.

The Context card

Context is Claude’s working memory for this chat. The card shows how full it is and what’s filling it. Claude’s newest models have a 1 million token context window: roughly four Harry Potter books laid side by side.

Besides your own messages, the card shows how much room your memory files, your skills and your MCP connectors (listed as MCP tools) already take up.

That matters because they load into every chat you start, so they eat into your usage limits from your very first prompt. If they’ve grown long, clean them up. Start with the prompt below, the one shown on screen in the video.

Look at everything that loads into my chats before I type anything: my CLAUDE.md and memory files, my skills, and my MCP tools. Run /context first. Then list each one with roughly how much space it takes, and tell me which ones I could shorten, merge or turn off without losing anything I actually use. Don’t change anything until I say yes.

Update 2: Sort your chats into sections

1. Click the three dots next to any chat in the left sidebar.
2. Choose Move to > New section, then create the section and name it.
3. From then on, drag any other session into it.

Instead of scrolling through fifty chats to find the right one, keep one section per project, per client or per part of the business. Your master session can also create sections and move chats into them for you (update 04).

Update 3: Nested sessions

A session is simply one of the chats in your sidebar. Now a session can start sessions of its own. These sub-sessions sit right under it in the sidebar, and when each one finishes, it reports back to the session that started it.

How to try it

1. Ask Claude to do a few tasks at once, and to start a nested session for each one.
2. The nested sessions show up under your main session. Each reports back to it when done.
3. Click into any of them to see everything it did, and keep working with it directly.

I’m launching a new marketing campaign. I need a sales page, the emails and the ads. Do these at the same time, and start a nested session for each one.

How is this different from subagents?

Subagents are helpers a session sends off to do one job, and they’re still useful. The difference is what you can see and do.

Steer one of them directly

Say you want a closer hand on the session writing your ads. Jump into that chat and tell it what to change, like this:

Make them more playful, and lead with the free trial.

Nested sessions work on any plan with the Code tab: Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. The plan table is under update 05.

Update 4: Run everything from one master session

Here’s something few people know yet: in Claude Code, one session can see your other sessions. So if you’re tired of jumping between ten or twelve chats in the sidebar, you can talk to just one: your master session.

Set it up

1. Pick one chat to be your master session, and pin it to the top of the sidebar so it’s always in view.
2. Tell Claude it’s your master session, with the prompt below.
3. From then on, talk to that one chat.

You’re my master session. Keep track of my other sessions from here.

Then ask it things like

Which of my chats are waiting on me for a decision?

Start two new sessions: [first task] and [second task].

Make a new section for all the chats about [topic].

Look further back than my last 20 sessions.

Ask for the decisions and it reads through your other chats, picks out the ones waiting on you and sums them up, all inside that one chat.

In effect, this pinned chat becomes a personal assistant that runs Claude and every other chat you have. It starts new sessions for you and you steer them from there. It tidies the sidebar too: in the video, it built a new section for every chat about the video without a single click.

Update 5: Claude Code projects

A closely related update is Claude Code projects. Same idea: one main session running a whole team of chats for you. But a few differences matter a lot:

• Projects run in the cloud, so they keep going with your laptop closed. Nested sessions run on your computer: if it’s asleep, they stop.
• Nested sessions can use every skill, file and tool on your computer. That’s a big help for work that needs your business context.
• Projects can use your skills and files too, but you add them first. You can upload files by hand, but the better route is to ask Claude to fetch the skills and context the project needs from your computer while it’s still awake.
• Your files go to Anthropic. Projects run on Anthropic’s cloud, so any business file you upload ends up on Anthropic’s servers.
• Shared custom memory. Set a rule once for the whole project and every session you start in it follows that rule.
• An Overview page shows what’s done, what’s still running and what’s waiting on you.

Get the skills and context this project needs.

Write everything in Australian English.

The rule goes in the project’s settings, under Memory, in the Project instructions box.

Nested sessions vs projects

Rule of thumb: needs your computer, or local work? Use nested sessions. Big ongoing project while you’re away? Try projects.

Who has access

Can’t see Projects?

1. Look for Projects in your sidebar.
2. Not there? Check under More in the sidebar. That’s usually where it hides.
3. Still nothing? Join the waitlist: claude.com/form/projects.

Update 6: Side chats

Claude is deep into a long task and a question pops into your head. Asking in the main chat is a bad idea: you interrupt the work and burn more tokens. Side chats exist for exactly this.

A new chat window opens next to the main one. It can read the entire main session, so you can ask it to explain what Claude has done so far or to check on progress.

Before, /btw opened a temporary chat that wasn’t saved anywhere. Now you can open as many side chats as you like, and each one stays open so you can come back to it. One catch: the desktop app doesn’t keep side chats once you quit it, so copy out anything worth keeping.

How long until this build finishes?

What’s this build even about?

What has Claude done so far?

Update 7: Split view

Zoomed out, up to ten different chats fit on one screen. Careful, though: that much on screen fills up your own brain’s context window. This one isn’t for beginners. Start with two side by side and add more once that feels easy.

Update 8: Docs, Slides, Design, Dashboards, Motion

Anthropic now has its own take on Google Docs and Google Slides, plus tools for design, dashboards and video. Each one produces what Anthropic calls an artifact: a canvas where you and Claude work on the same document, design or dashboard. You can leave comments for Claude to fix. And, as in Google Docs, you can publish any of them as a live link or share them with your team or a client.

On Pro or Max? No Motion yet

AI-powered artifacts

Example: a dashboard your team can ask

Say there’s a dashboard you and your team use constantly. Ask Claude to add a chat window or a search bar right inside it, where anyone can type a question and Claude answers from the data on that dashboard.

Add a search bar where anyone can ask about this data

Sharing it with your team

Because artifacts can be shared, teammates just open the link you sent and ask it questions to get the data they need. The dashboard itself is AI-powered.

Nobody has to learn Claude Code, which matters most when you share with a wider audience. Each person signs in with their own Claude account, and every question runs on their own plan.

Update 9: Slash commands worth knowing

Anthropic shipped new slash commands and refreshed some of the most useful older ones. Type / in the message box to see them all. Here are seven.

Make my own output style: short, warm, no jargon

Three more quick ones

Update 10: Mods

A mod is a small add-on that changes how the Claude Code app looks or behaves, and you can make one just by describing it to Claude. Mods are on by default in Claude Code 2.1.286 and later, and they work in the desktop app from that version on. Here are the guide author’s two favourites.

1. Ribbon (the guide author’s own mod, in daily use)

A slim bar above your chat box showing how much of your weekly usage is left. It also shows whether that chat’s prompt cache is warm or cold, which goes a long way toward cutting token burn. Free and open source: github.com/robonuggets/ribbon.

2. Savvy Progress

A progress bar above your chat box, so you can see how close Claude is to finishing a long task. On bigger jobs, where a team of helpers (subagents) shares the work, a live panel on the right shows each of them, complete with little pixel Claude crabs you can customise. Free and open source: github.com/JohnnyVizz/claude-kit.

Want to go deeper? The author’s full video on Claude mods: youtube.com/watch?v=lDrAZ1wAyVs.

Install Ribbon

install this https://github.com/robonuggets/ribbon

Your agent runs one command and the bar shows up in your next session.

/plugin install ribbon --marketplace robonuggets/ribbon

Type y when it asks “Add marketplace?”, pick the user scope with Enter, then start a new session.

Install Savvy Progress

/plugin marketplace add johnnyvizz/claude-kit
/plugin install savvy-progress@claude-kit

Restart the session afterwards.

Mods are built on an early-access Claude Code feature, so things can change between releases. If Savvy Progress doesn’t appear after installing it this way, download the repository once and load it by hand:

git clone https://github.com/johnnyvizz/claude-kit.git ~/claude-kit

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_PLUGIN_DIRS": "~/claude-kit/plugins/savvy-progress"
  }
}

That loads it in every session, desktop app included. If the setting already exists, add to it rather than replacing it. On Windows, use the full folder path and separate several folders with ; instead of :. Your .claude folder sits inside your user folder. To update, run git pull in the claude-kit folder.

Update 11: Keyboard shortcuts

More shortcuts from this guide

Shortcuts look like a small thing, but if you use Claude a lot, learning them pays off.

Where this goes next

Switching these on is the easy part: most of this guide takes a few minutes. The skill that pays is running Claude like a team: one master session, the right work in the right place, and setups built for your own business and for the clients you serve.

That’s how BossaMotion runs today: one coordinator keeping track of several workstreams, each workstream in its own chat, project rules written once, and deliverables that come back for sign-off. It’s the same design we bring into our clients’ operations, with agents handling the repetitive work and people deciding what matters.

Every link

The setup checklist

Layout and settings

• Open the Code tab and click Show session rail
• Settings > Claude Code: “Connect new sessions to Remote Control”
• Settings > Claude Code: “Keep computer awake while Claude works”
• Run the context clean-up prompt

Sessions

• Sort your chats into sections: three dots, Move to > New section
• Ask Claude for a few tasks at once, each in its own nested session
• Pin a master session and tell Claude it’s your master session
• Find Projects: your sidebar, then More, then the waitlist (Pro and Max)
• Open a side chat: three dots at the top right, /btw or Ctrl + ;
• Try split view with two chats: Alt + click

Tools and extras

• Make one artifact, and check your plan in the artifacts table
• Settings > Capabilities: “AI-powered artifacts”, then add a search bar to a dashboard
• Try /output-style, /doctor, /skill-doctor and /advisor
• Install the Ribbon and Savvy Progress mods
• Press Ctrl + Alt + Space to open Claude from anywhere (Windows)
• Press Esc twice to rewind, and Ctrl + D to talk instead of type
• Press Ctrl + / (Cmd + / on a Mac) to see every shortcut