What's this about?
Computer use in Claude Cowork and the Claude Code desktop app now runs in the background: Claude clicks, types and opens apps in the applications you have allowed, while you keep working on something else. It is already on if you have used computer use before, or you can enable it in Settings → General. Beta on Pro and Max, macOS only.
Why is "in the background" the significant word?
Because until now computer use meant surrendering your machine. The agent took the mouse, took window focus, and you watched. That made it a demo rather than a tool — you were paying an agent's wall-clock time with your own. Running it in the background makes it genuinely parallel, which is what people wanted. It also removes the thing that made it self-limiting: you could always see what it was doing, because it was doing it in front of you.
Why does this matter to you?
- This is the exact configuration the "your AI agent has root" thread was warning about, now shipped as a default-on convenience for anyone who had tried computer use before.
- The permission model is app-level allow-listing, which is better than nothing and much coarser than the isolation that thread recommended.
- It is macOS-only and in beta, which limits the immediate blast radius — but the direction is set.