Dispatch: Running Your Business From Your Phone

Last verified: 14 April 2026 | Applies to: Pro, Max

In 30 seconds

Dispatch lets you send tasks from your phone to your desktop Cowork session. You type a quick instruction on your mobile (“prep me for the 2pm with Acme” or “pull this month’s revenue summary”) and Claude executes it on your Mac using your full Cowork environment: files, plugins, connectors, and all. The results land in a persistent conversation thread you can check from either device. It turns dead time (taxis, airport queues, waiting rooms) into productive time without needing your laptop open in front of you.

Prerequisites

• Pro or Max plan
• Claude Desktop installed and open on your Mac or PC (macOS Apple Silicon or Windows x64)
• The Claude mobile app (iOS or Android) at the latest version
• Your computer must be awake and connected to the internet

What it does

graph LR
    A[Type task on phone] --> B[Task sent to desktop Cowork]
    B --> C[Claude executes with full access]
    C --> D[Results appear on phone]
    D --> E[Continue conversation from either device]

Dispatch bridges the gap between your phone and your desktop. On your phone, you get a lightweight interface for sending instructions and reading results. On your desktop, Claude does the heavy lifting, accessing your files, running plugins, querying connectors, exactly as if you were sitting at your desk.

The conversation thread is persistent. You can send a task from your phone at 9am, check the results at 10am, and continue the conversation from your desktop at noon. Context carries across.

How to set it up

Step 1: Pair your phone

In Claude Desktop, open Cowork and type /dispatch. Claude generates a QR code on your screen.

Open the Claude mobile app on your phone and scan the code. This pairs your mobile and desktop sessions. The connection persists. You will use it repeatedly.

Step 2: Send your first task

On your phone, type a task just as you would in Cowork:

Pull my revenue numbers for March so far and summarise them in three bullet points.

Claude executes the task on your desktop using whatever connectors and files are available in your Cowork environment. The results appear on your phone within seconds to a few minutes, depending on complexity.

Step 3: Review and continue

Read the results on your phone. You can:

• Ask follow-up questions. “Break that down by product line.”
• Request actions. “Save that summary to my Reports folder.”
• Queue another task. “Now draft a follow-up email to the Acme team.”

The conversation continues seamlessly. When you get back to your desk, the full thread is waiting in Cowork.

How operators actually use it

Meeting prep from a taxi

You are heading to a client meeting and realise you have not reviewed the latest numbers:

Prep me for my 2pm meeting with Sarah at Meridian Group. Check our last three invoices to them, pull their account summary from HubSpot, and list the three things I should raise.

By the time you arrive, the briefing is on your phone. Glance at it in the lobby before walking in.

Revenue check between meetings

Between back-to-back meetings, you want a quick pulse:

What's our revenue for March to date? Compare to the same point last month. One paragraph, no fluff.

A 10-second task that would have waited until you were back at your desk.

Follow-up emails on the go

After a meeting, while the conversation is fresh:

Draft a follow-up email to James Chen from today's meeting. Key points: we agreed on the March 31 deadline for the pilot, they're sending us API credentials this week, and we'll schedule a check-in for April 7. Professional but warm tone.

Claude drafts the email using your Cowork context. Review it on your phone, then send it from your desktop when you’re ready, or ask Claude to send it via your Gmail connector.

End-of-day task assignment

Heading home and want tomorrow’s priorities queued up:

Review my TASKS.md and Slack messages from today. Create a prioritised list for tomorrow morning — top 3 items only. Save it to my Morning folder.

When you open your laptop tomorrow, the briefing is waiting.

Scenario: Lauren, COO

Lauren runs a 35-person professional services firm and spends two to three hours a day in meetings or transit. Before Dispatch, she would mentally note things to look up later — client details, revenue figures, follow-up emails — and half of them would slip. Now she sends tasks to Claude from her phone the moment they occur to her. The persistent thread means nothing gets lost. Her most-used pattern is post-meeting follow-ups: she types the key points into Dispatch while walking back to her office, and by the time she sits down, Claude has drafted the email and saved the meeting notes. The main limitation she hit was her computer going to sleep during a long offsite. Dispatch tasks queued but did not execute until she woke the machine.

What to watch out for

• Your computer must be awake and Claude Desktop must be open. Dispatch sends tasks to your desktop Cowork session. If your computer is asleep or Desktop is closed, tasks queue but do not execute until both are active again. Consider adjusting your sleep settings if you rely on Dispatch during the day.
• Requires the Claude mobile app. Dispatch runs through the Claude mobile app (iOS or Android), not a web browser. Make sure you have the latest version installed.
• Available on Pro and Max.
• Internet required on both ends. Your phone and your Mac both need an internet connection. Dispatch will not work offline on either device.
• Research preview caveats apply. Dispatch launched as a production feature, but it is new. Expect occasional rough edges. Tasks may occasionally fail to sync, or results may take longer than expected to appear on your phone.
• Security consideration. Dispatch tasks execute with your full Cowork permissions: files, connectors, plugins. Anyone with access to your paired phone session can send tasks to your desktop. Treat the Dispatch bookmark like a password.

10 things to dispatch while away from your desk

You do not need to wait for a big task. The best Dispatch habits are small, frequent instructions sent in the moment they occur to you.

1. Meeting prep. “Pull the last three emails and any open invoices for Meridian Group. Summarise in bullet points I can scan in the lobby.”
2. File organisation. “Sort the 40 files in my Downloads folder into subfolders by type: invoices, contracts, receipts, and other.”
3. Report generation. “Create a one-page revenue summary for March from the CSV in my Finance folder. Include month-on-month change.”
4. Email drafts. “Draft a follow-up to Sarah Chen about the April pilot. Confirm the timeline we discussed and ask for the API credentials.”
5. Data exports. “Export all overdue tasks from Asana and save them as a CSV in my Reports folder.”
6. Client follow-ups. “Check my CRM for any contacts I have not emailed in the last 14 days. Draft a brief check-in for each.”
7. Expense categorisation. “Go through the receipts in my Expenses folder, read the amounts and vendors, and add them to my expense tracker spreadsheet.”
8. Weekly summary. “Compile my weekly ops summary from TASKS.md, Slack highlights, and the revenue CSV. Save it to my Monday Briefings folder.”
9. Competitor check. “Search for recent news on Acme Corp, BrightPath, and Nuvola. Summarise anything relevant in three bullet points each.”
10. Document formatting. “Take the rough notes in meeting-notes-raw.md and format them into our standard meeting minutes template. Save as a new file.”

Each of these takes under 30 seconds to type on your phone. Claude does the heavy lifting on your desktop while you keep moving.

Troubleshooting Dispatch

Problem	Cause	Fix
Task queued but not executing	Desktop is asleep or Claude Desktop is closed	Adjust your Mac’s energy settings so it stays awake during working hours. Confirm Claude Desktop is running and not minimised to tray.
Dispatch paired but not connecting	Mobile app or Desktop app is outdated	Update both the Claude mobile app and Claude Desktop to the latest version. Re-pair if needed.
Task fails or returns incomplete results	The task is too complex for a single instruction	Break it into smaller steps. Send one Dispatch message per task rather than chaining five actions into one prompt.
Authentication errors on connectors	OAuth token has expired	Open Claude Desktop, go to Settings, re-authenticate the affected connector, then retry from your phone.
Results never appear on phone	Desktop v1.1.9310 bug	Update Claude Desktop to v1.1.9493 or later. This version fixed a critical Dispatch rendering bug.

Chaining Dispatch with scheduled tasks

Dispatch handles tasks you think of in the moment. Scheduled tasks handle recurring work that runs on a cadence. The two complement each other well.

Set up the recurring base, then dispatch the exceptions. For example, schedule your weekly ops report to generate every Monday at 8am. Then on Wednesday, when a board member asks for an ad hoc update, dispatch: “Run the same ops report but for this week so far, and add a section on the Johnson deal.”

Use Dispatch to refine scheduled output. If your scheduled morning briefing is missing a section you now want, dispatch: “Add competitor pricing changes to my daily briefing template in the Morning folder.” The next scheduled run picks up the updated template automatically.

Queue tomorrow’s priorities from tonight’s commute. Send a Dispatch task at 6pm: “Review today’s Slack messages and my Asana tasks. Create a prioritised list for tomorrow and save it to my Morning folder.” Combine this with a scheduled task that reads that folder each morning and posts the priorities to your team’s Slack channel.

See Scheduled Tasks for the full guide on setting up recurring automation.

Related

• Scheduled Tasks: automate recurring tasks so they run without you
• Daily Operating System: build Dispatch into your daily workflow
• Meeting Prep: the meeting briefings Dispatch is perfect for
• Cowork: the desktop environment Dispatch connects to
• Setting Up Persistent Workspaces: organise your Cowork Projects so Dispatch tasks land in the right context

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