Claude Desktop 2.7032.0 shipped yesterday alongside Claude Code 2.1.280, which is also the bundled Claude Code version. Since version 2.2553 on 17 September there were only patches; this is a bigger jump, and it lands on a few things that get in the way daily.
MCP servers now run on the far side
The most important change sits under Code. SSH sessions on the new connection engine — the computer’s own OpenSSH, the default on macOS and Linux — now start the MCP servers from your desktop settings under Claude Code on the remote machine. Their tools keep working even while the app is closed.
If a server isn’t installed there, or the host already brings its own, the session’s MCP list says so. That is a real difference for anyone developing on a server who until now had to keep track of which tools were running where.
Remote Control only asks when someone really is steering from elsewhere
With Remote Control on, Claude used to ask before every terminal command, including when you were sitting at your own machine typing. Now it asks only when the work was started or steered from another device, and that same card can turn Remote Control off for the session.
Two large-repository annoyances are gone as well. Starting a new worktree session and archiving or deleting one took a long time, and on macOS the app froze for up to half a minute on very large node_modules folders. Also fixed: a session that refused to resume because its own worktree had the branch checked out.
Claude stops making itself the default app
One fix plenty of people will welcome: Claude was becoming the default app for files such as .md and .docx, after which Windows started asking about files that already had a default. On macOS, Claude no longer shows up in the «Open with» menu for Excel and PowerPoint files. «Other…» still opens them in Claude.
Also repaired: messages sent while a turn was running sometimes went missing or landed out of order in the transcript. A message sent with no network pretended to send for about a minute; it now fails within seconds and tells you that you went offline. And when the side panel failed to load, a «Couldn’t finish loading» screen replaced the whole window — the chat now stays open.
In Cowork one line does most of the work
The Cowork section is short. The health-data consent dialog and the Microsoft 365 work-account notice now also appear when a connector is added from a chat suggestion. Suggestions for connectors your organisation hasn’t enabled no longer offer Connect; they offer Request, or tell you to ask an organisation owner.
And one small thing that would have caught me out: messages starting with a file path, such as /tmp/notes.txt, were refused with an «Unknown skill» error instead of being sent.
This release fixes what stood in automation’s way
Line the items up and a pattern shows: MCP servers that survive over SSH, Remote Control that doesn’t stop at every command, a new limit on how long a scheduled task may reuse an MCP approval. Those are all obstacles for sessions that run with nobody watching.
Which fits the model that shipped the same day. An agent that works for 18 hours straight isn’t much use if the app asks about every terminal command on the way there.