Claude Code can now browse the web from its desktop application

Claude Code adds a built-in browser to its desktop application, allowing the AI agent to read, click, and interact with websites to test code and read docs.

Claude Code gets a built-in browser in its desktop application. Claude could already spin up a local development server to check its work; now, it can load documentation, a mockup, or any website, then read it, click on it, and interact with the page in the same way.

In practice, this moves several back-and-forth steps out of the terminal that previously relied on the user. Claude can consult the online documentation of a library or an API during a task, without having the content pasted in manually. It can open a mockup or a reference page and click through it to align its implementation with it. On the verification side, it loads the application it just modified, navigates the interface, and spots discrepancies; on a backend service, it tests endpoints, reads server logs, and fixes the issues it encounters. A bug that only appears in the browser can thus be reproduced by interacting directly with the page, rather than described from memory.

The browser runs in a sandbox, isolated from the host machine, rather than by controlling the actual screen like the computer use feature does. It runs on its own profile, separate from the personal browser, with no saved credentials or history.

As for settings, everything is controlled within the application. You can enable or disable the browser, and clear browsing data, from Settings then Claude Code. Persistence is managed via the Persist sessions option in the toolbar dropdown menu: when enabled, it keeps cookies and local storage from one session to the next to avoid logging in again; when disabled, each session starts from scratch. Local servers and project files remain accessible without validation, but each external site must be authorized the first time, a permission that can be remembered per site and revoked in the settings. Even on an approved site, Claude will not make purchases, create accounts, or bypass CAPTCHAs without user intervention.