Big Idea

The argument in one line.

The new Claude desktop app turns one chat into a manager of parallel, focused sessions with built-in testing, so you build faster and spend fewer tokens if you know which feature fits which job.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You are a non-technical builder using the Claude desktop app to ship mobile or web apps and want to know which of the new features actually matter.
You keep hitting usage limits or watching Claude lose track of your project, and you want concrete habits for managing context and tokens.
You build iPhone apps on a Mac and want Claude to test the app itself instead of you tapping through every screen and screen recording bugs.

SKIP IF…

You work only in the terminal version of Claude Code and never open the desktop app.
You are on Windows or have no Mac, so the iOS simulator section will not apply to you.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

The redesigned Claude desktop app adds a session rail, nested sessions that build separate parts of a project in parallel, sidechats for side questions, and a context card that shows how full Claude's memory is. It also adds a built-in iOS simulator Claude can tap through and debug on its own, rewind to undo a bad direction, and remote control from your phone. The host builds a plant app, a web dashboard and a launch video at once, and says to keep to four or five sessions and to hand off to a fresh chat before context reaches about 300,000 to 400,000 tokens.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:46

01 · What changed and the plan

The redesign, 15 features, and the idea to demo them by building one app.

00:46 – 02:54

02 · Environments and the session rail

Meet Sprout, then choose local, remote or cloud as the environment and read the environment card.

02:54 – 05:21

03 · Nested sessions

Build the app, web dashboard and launch video in parallel, each in its own session, with to-do lists and trade-offs.

05:21 – 06:45

04 · Sponsor: Omnisend

Ad read for the Omnisend MCP connector.

06:45 – 08:07

05 · Cloud projects

Nested sessions that run in the cloud, with their benefits and beta limits.

08:07 – 10:44

06 · Sidechats, context and connectors

Use /btw for side questions, read the context card, hand off to a fresh chat, and trim connectors.

10:44 – 13:39

07 · iOS simulator and in-app browser

Claude taps through the app, finds a bug, fixes it, then tests the web dashboard in the browser.

13:39 – 15:13

08 · Rewind and the launch video

Undo a design direction with /rewind, then view the code-written launch video and Claude Motion.

15:13 – 18:07

09 · Output, remote control, auto continue and Mods

Find files on the output card, approve from your phone, resume after limits, and add an iPhone Duo panel with Claude Mods.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

An environment in the new Claude desktop app is just where Claude runs: your own computer, Anthropic's cloud, or a remote machine you connect.
Nested sessions keep each job focused, and each one reports back to the main chat like a team reporting to a boss.
Unlike background helpers, every nested session is a full chat you can click into and talk to directly.
Each nested session carries its own memory, so three sessions at once drain your plan faster. Four or five is the practical ceiling.
Use nested sessions when jobs are independent and one session when one job must finish before the next can start.
Typing /btw asks a question in a side tab, so it never enters the main chat and never burns context window.
Claude tends to lose performance once a long session passes roughly 300,000 to 400,000 tokens of context.
Compacting is lossy, so the cleaner reset is asking for a handoff prompt and pasting it into a brand new chat.
Connected apps count against your context even when they are not called, so switch off connectors you are not using.
The built-in iOS simulator lets Claude tap every screen, find bugs, fix them and retest without you screen recording anything.
The iOS simulator needs a Mac and Xcode, which is about a 10 GB download.
Cloud projects keep running with your laptop closed, but they cannot use the iOS simulator because that only runs on your own computer.
Rewinding to an earlier message costs fewer tokens than writing instructions to undo a change, and it is more reliable.
Claude can write whole launch videos as code, so changing one color or word only touches that part of the video.
Auto continue resumes your session when a usage limit resets, but only if your computer stays awake and the app stays open.
Claude Mods let you ask Claude to add your own panel to the app, such as a preview for a two-screen phone.

Takeaway

Split the work, watch the memory, test automatically

WHAT TO LEARN

Faster app building with Claude comes from splitting independent jobs into focused sessions, keeping an eye on how full its memory is, and letting it test its own work.

02Environments and the session rail

Pick the environment first and check the environment card each time you start, because Claude builds in whatever folder it is pointed at, right or wrong.

03Nested sessions

Run independent jobs as nested sessions, keep it to four or five, and use a single session when one job depends on another finishing first.

05Cloud projects

Cloud projects keep working with your laptop closed, but they cannot use the iOS simulator and are still in beta, so match the tool to the project type.

06Sidechats and context

Ask side questions with /btw so explanations of unfamiliar terms never enter the main chat or spend its context window.
Watch the context card and start a fresh chat from a handoff prompt around 300,000 to 400,000 tokens rather than relying on a lossy compact.
Turn off connectors you are not using, since they count against context even when Claude never calls them.

07iOS simulator and in-app browser

Let Claude test the app itself in the iOS simulator or in-app browser, then fix what it reports, instead of tapping through every screen yourself.

08Rewind and the launch video

Use /rewind to return to a known good message when a direction goes wrong, which costs fewer tokens than writing undo instructions.

09Remote control, auto continue and Mods

Turn on remote control and keep the computer awake so approvals and usage-limit resets do not stall a long build.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Environment: The place where Claude runs and which folder it works in. It can be your own computer, Anthropic's cloud, or a remote machine you connect.
Nested session: A separate chat started under your main chat to handle one job. You can open it and talk to it, and it reports back to the main chat when done.
Session rail: The right-hand panel in the Claude desktop app that holds cards for environment, context, connectors and output files.
Sidechat: A side tab for asking questions, opened with /btw, that does not enter the main conversation or use its context.
Context window: The amount of conversation Claude can hold in memory at once. As it fills, Claude gets worse at remembering earlier decisions.
Compact: A button that summarizes the chat so far and frees up context space, at the cost of losing some small details.
Handoff prompt: A summary Claude writes of your project so far, which you paste into a fresh chat to continue with clean memory.
Connector: An outside app such as Notion or Supabase linked into Claude. Active connectors take up a little context even when unused.
Rewind: The /rewind command, which lists your earlier messages and returns the project to the point before the one you pick.
Claude Mods: Customizations that change how the Claude desktop app itself works, such as adding an extra panel.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

05:30productOmnisend

07:30productClaude projects (cloud, beta)

10:50toolXcode

14:50productClaude Motion

17:10toolClaude Mods

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

03:13

“It helps Claude be more focused on one specific job and it doesn't get mixed up with other tasks.”

clear reason for parallel sessions→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

09:35

“When this gets full, I like to just ask it to provide a handoff prompt and start a new chat.”

one concrete habit→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

Atomic just turned the Cloud desktop app into something completely different, and people are already calling this Cloud 2 .0. And this might be the biggest Cloud update of the year. You can now create multiple sessions under one main chat.

You have a new built -in iOS simulator right inside of Cloud, and just a massive upgrade to the overall layout of the app. Now, there are 15 features that I want to cover in this video, which is quite a lot. And if I just went through each of these one by one, I think the video would get very boring pretty quickly.

So instead, I'm going to build a brand new app together with you guys, and I want to show you all of these new features. features while I'm building the app. So you can see how these features are actually being used in real life.

And some of these features really blew me away because they make building an app so much easier than it used to be. So if you know the tricks that I'm about to show you, you're going to be able to build your apps a lot faster and you'll save a lot more tokens doing it. Let's get started.

all right so this is called sprout this is a plant care app and it's the app that we're going to be building today as i'm showing you all the new features of the cloud desktop app and here's how the app will work basically so you want to add your plants that you want to track and the app basically reminds you when to water your plants and each plant here is this little character if you forget to water it it will start to droop But as you water it more, it will perk back up.

Now, I'm going to use the new Cloud Desktop app to build three different things here for Sprout. Number one is going to be the mobile app itself. And number two, a web dashboard where you can manage all your plans from your computer.

And also a short launch video to promote this app. Now, before Cloud can build anything, it needs to know where to build it, right? And this is the first thing you're going to see when you open the app.

And this is something called setting up the environment. And it's right over here under the chat box. Now, in the old desktop app, you can just simply select a folder.

and you can start building but now you have to pick an environment first and to be honest this actually confused me at first too but essentially an environment is just where cloud runs right now there are a few places where cloud can run you can either run on a computer the cloud or another remote computer that you connect to so now you have to pick the computer first and then which folder on that computer now for what we're doing today you want to choose local here which is your own computer this is the one that i use the most and it's the only one that can open the brand new iphone simulator that i'm going to be showing out later all right so i'm going to pick my sprout folder here and cloud will actually remember this setting so the next time i log in i can just click on the sprout folder and i'm good to go and i think that's a nice feature to have now there's also this cloud option so with this one cloud actually runs on anthropic servers instead of your own computer and it works from your project files online

a place like github right but you have to connect it to your github account so it can store some files right this way it will keep running even when your laptop's closed but of course if you don't use github you can ignore this for now now once you've started building something if you look over to the right side here you can see this new panel which is called the session rail and this is where a lot of the new features live now if you don't see this panel you want to look at the top left corner and you want to make sure that you're actually on cloud code and not chat now there are a few cards here which i'm going to explain as we go but the card on top here is the environment card it will show you which computer and which folder cloud is actually working in so if you forget you can go in here and confirm i kind of check this every time i start something new because if you're in the wrong folder cloud will basically build your app in the wrong place all right so this is one of the biggest updates here which is called nested sessions now a session is just one chat that you're having with cloud

But now Claude can actually start multiple sessions, which are called nested sessions. So for example, we're building three different things here, the app, the web application, and also the launch video. And I'm going to ask Claude to actually build all three at once.

So I can just say, hey, I want you to build three different things here. I want you to build the Sprout mobile app and also a web app where people can manage their plans and also a 20 -second launch video and do these three in parallel each in its own session. Now when you hit go, you're going to notice that Claude first writes this to -do list over here, which is...

also a new update so you can see what cloud is actually doing and also the sequence of things that it's going to complete first and it will check off each item as it goes and i think this is super helpful so you always know what it's working on now if you look to the sidebar on the left cloud has actually started three new nested sessions and they are created in this drop down under my main session here so you can see that one is building the app the second one is building the web application and the third one is creating that launch video now i like this feature a lot because it helps cloud be more focused on one specific job and it doesn't get mixed up with other tasks And the nice thing about this is that when a session finishes, it reports back to your main chat, which is kind of like the boss here.

So your main chat knows what's done and what needs your approval. Now, if you've used Cloud Code before, you might be thinking, doesn't Cloud already have helpers that work in the background? Yes, it does.

But you can't really click into each session and talk directly to those agents. So that's why I think this setup is a lot better because each one of these sessions is actually a chat that you can click into. So if I go into this mobile app session here, maybe I ask it to, hey, make the plants a bit rounder and give it a bigger smile.

and when you do that only this session changes while the other two just keep going in the background so as you can see you can just fix one thing without stopping all the other builds now there is one downside though each session has its own memory so three sessions running at once will actually use up your plan faster so i wouldn't really run more than four to five at a time now the big question is when should we use nested sessions versus a normal session so i think nested sessions are great when the jobs are separate like over here we're building the app the web app and also the launch video and they're not dependent on one another to finish but if one job needs another one to be finished first that's when i just want to have one session Quick ad break from our sponsor Omnisend.

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Now, there's another feature that works a lot like nested sessions, and it's called cloud projects. So the nested sessions I showed you previously, all of these are actually running on my own computer. But with cloud projects, they run in the cloud instead.

And the way it works is that when you start a project, you only need to talk to one main chat. You basically tell it what you want, and it will actually split up the work and start several new sessions automatically. And after each one finishes, they got to report back to the main chat.

So it's basically nested sessions, but in the cloud. And I see a couple of big benefits to this because is running in the cloud it will keep going even if your laptop's closed so you can basically give it a long task and close your laptop you can go away and it's gonna still keep working now there's one thing to note though i think this is great if you're building something that runs on the web like the sprout dashboard here that we're building but if you're building an iphone app and you want to test it in the built -in ios simulator projects can't really do that because it runs in the cloud and the simulator only runs on your own computer And also Cloud Project is still in beta and it's only rolling out to some people on Pro and Mac.

So you might not see it yet. And it also uses up your plan faster because every one of those sessions are running at the same time and your files get uploaded to Anthropic Server. So I won't be using this too much for now, but I think it can be really useful for some type of projects.

And then once this is out of beta, I'm going to be doing more videos on this. Now, the next feature is called sidechats. So when you're using Cloud to build anything, and especially if you're non -technical, you're going to come across a lot of terms that you don't know.

like what is expo go what is a cli why are we building this using react native i definitely didn't know what all of these meant when i first started so if you have a question while cloud is working you can just type slash btw and ask it your question or you can go directly to the panel here and ask it something like hey what is expo and why are we using it and cloud will answer you in the side tab here and it's not going to affect the main build and because my question does not appear in the main chat it won't affect claude's memory in the session which is obviously great because it won't burn extra tokens and fill up your memory context window And it just keeps everything clean.

Now, speaking of context window, the next feature I want to talk about is this context card. So if you look at the session rail on the right again, it is the second card down. It's going to show you how much of Cloud's memory you have actually used up in the session.

And this is super important because if you have a big project, Cloud does really well for the first hour or so, and then it will start losing performance. Like, you know, it's forgetting your app's colors or it's just redoing things that you already fixed. And this is happening because its memory is getting full.

so over here you can see the percentage that's being used and what is actually taking up the space right now i personally feel like cloud starts to lose performance when you get to about 300 400 000 so when it starts getting to that point you can actually click on this compact button on the card here and cloud will summarize the chat up to that point it will keep the important parts and free up some space now keep in mind that this is not perfect though because cloud can forget some of the smaller details when summarizing so the cleanest way and the thing that i personally do is when When this gets full, I like to just ask it to provide a handoff prompt and tell it that I want to start a new chat.

And when I get that prompt, just copy it and paste it in the brand new chat. And now Cloud can work from a fresh memory while still retaining all the information of what you built so far by reading this summary that you just pasted. Now, right under the context card here is something called the connectors card.

And this shows you all the apps that connected into Cloud like Notion, Hicksfield, Superbase. And this has some impact on your memory, although not a lot. And not a lot of people know this, but even if it's not calling that particular tool in the session, it's still going to count against your memory, although it's minimal.

So as good practice, if you don't use any of this, you want to just remember to shut them off. now going back to the session where we are building the ios app you're going to see that every time cloud finishes working on something it is going to give you the suggested next steps now this is something small obviously but it is just a helpful feature that cloud has created by predicting what is the next thing that you're going to want to do for example if you just finish building your ios app you're probably going to want to preview it right so here it has predicted what you want to do next And it's going to make that suggestion here in this card where you can just simply click yes or no.

Again, something small, but it makes the experience so much better. All right, so all these three sessions have actually finished, but because Claude says it's done. doesn't mean that it actually works right so we're going to test all of these and we're going to start with the mobile app here and that actually brings me the new ios simulator and this thing is actually built right into the desktop app now of course before this if i wanted to test a mobile app that i'm building i have to install the app on my phone and i have to tap through the app myself and if i want to make changes i gotta screen record it explain plot the changes that i want to make but now we have a simulator here and the fact that it's built into the desktop app you can actually test everything directly here and cloud can also see it And more importantly, you can test it as well.

So you can now see that Cloud is actually tapping through all the pages, every button here, every screen on its own to check if everything works. And it's doing all of these autonomously. And you can see now that when it finds a bug, it's going to catch it and it's going to report back to you.

So you'll see when a user tries to water the second plant here, the animation doesn't really work. So Cloud is seeing that error and it's going back into the code and it's going to fix the bug and it's going to test it again. make sure that everything works now the simulator here is not just for testing buttons or animations you can also test things like your notifications live activities and those animations that happen in this dynamic island here directly on this simulator and of course you can tap through all of this yourself because it just works like a normal iphone and you'll notice they also have a lot more controls here they have the return key delete key you can rotate the phone sideways And you can even show or hide the keyboard.

And if you see a mistake, you can obviously take a screenshot or just do a screen recording right on the panel here and drop it in the chat. Now, big downside to this that you need to be on a Mac and you have to have the Xcode app installed, which is Apple's app for building iPhone apps. It is a pretty big download of 10 gigs.

But if you already have all this, I think this is a really good way to test mobile apps. now if you don't want to install xcode i do have a small trick where you can build a custom panel on the right side here so you can still preview your app without installing anything else and you can even preview your app on the iphone duo here that has two separate screens so i'm going to be showing you how to set this up at the end of the video or the next one here is in -app browser now this is not new but a lot of people still don't know about this so cloud can open your website using its in -app browser you can click around and check if everything works right so if you're building anything that is web -based like the sprout dashboard here cloud can actually open it in the browser it can test everything just like it did with the mobile app So now you can see that it's actually testing if all the buttons work.

It's testing all different scenarios. And if you have a form on the page, Cloud can also test that as well. And not only that, but it can also make sure that your website is responsive and looks good on mobile.

And this is super crucial because most websites are open from a mobile device. And if you want to make changes, you can click on this button to take a screenshot. You can do some markups and you can send it back to Cloud to fix.

Now, speaking of fixing things, at some point when you're building things, Cloud might just head off in the wrong direction. For example, when I was building this web app, I did ask Cloud to make the design more fun, more colorful. And then I also asked it to...

make the color theme more green and after some time i felt that it actually went too far and i don't like it now when this happens you can simply ask claude to undo all this right but sometimes it doesn't know at which exact point that you want to revert to so what you can do is you can use this feature called slash rewind so i can type in slash rewind and it will pull up a list of my earlier messages so i can just pick this exact one right here which is the point before I asked Cloud to make everything more fun and colorful.

And now the app is back to exactly how it was. Now, just knowing that this feature exists, I think it's going to make a lot more people more comfortable in trying out new ideas, because if Cloud breaks something, you can just go back to exactly where it was before. And if you think about it, this actually saves you more tokens too, because if you give Cloud manual instructions to undo something, you're actually going to spend more tokens by just sending those instructions.

And you also have the risk of it not getting it right in the first time either. So I think this is a great feature to have. Now, when I was doing all that, the third session actually finished the launch video.

And I'm going to play this for you. Now, none of this is actually video generation because Claude wrote every single animation using code here. And Opus 5 .5, which is the model that I'm using here, is really good at this.

And the nice thing about having this written in code is that if I want to change a color or a word here or how fast something moves, I can just ask it. And Claude is only going to change that part without touching the rest of the video. Now, Anthropic also released something called Cloud Motion, which makes videos like this right inside of the Cloud app.

And it kind of works the same way. But the difference is that it will give you a separate editor here. So you can actually click in and change the words yourself or the timing.

And when you're done, you can export it as a video in just one click. But the downside is that right now it's only available on team and enterprise plans. But I'm pretty sure that it will come to the pro and max plans as well.

All right, so by now, Cloud has produced a lot of files across a bunch of different sessions. So if you want to find out where all the files are, you want to go to this output card here. It is the last card in the session rail on the right side.

And I think this is just a nice way to see all your output files in one place. Now, of course, building three different apps here can take a while. In reality, you're probably not going to sit at your desk watching Cloud work through the whole thing.

And the moment that you step away, it's probably going to ask you to approve something. But there's actually this feature called remote control. Now, this has been around for a few months, but they actually moved.

switch right in the environment card here which makes it a lot easier to find so when you turn this on you can carry on the same session from your cloud app on your phone so if i were to go out and grab a cup of coffee and while i was out claude needs my permission to approve something i get a notification on my phone and i can just approve it immediately and it can continue building now the remote control is off by default you kind of need to toggle it on in every session but if you do want remote control on for every session you can go to settings they can enable that but of course you can that computer has to always be on and the cloud desktop app has to be open as well now next is auto continue so if you've ever hit your usage limit halfway through building something everything just stops right and then you gotta remember to come back and you gotta start it again but that's not the case anymore because now when your limit resets cloud will actually automatically resume the session now this has been on by default for some time now so you might not have even noticed it but i just want to mention it so that you know it's there but keep in mind that if your laptop goes to sleep cloud also stops so you

want to make sure that you go to the setting called keep computer awake while cloud works and make sure this is on all right so our apps are pretty much ready to go but there's one more thing that i wanted to show you because apple just released the iphone duo and it's got two screens the front screen and also now a huge screen inside which is completely different from a normal iphone right so when i'm building an app i also want it to look good on this iphone duo And I can't really test it on this iPhone simulator here because this is for the normal iPhone.

But now we have something called CloudMods. And CloudMods allow you to customize how the Cloud app works, even adding an extra panel. So I did ask Cloud to create me a new panel every time I build an iOS app, specifically for the iPhone Duo, so I can see how my designs appear on this phone.

And I don't even have to know how to code this. I can just simply ask Cloud to do it for me. and now when i'm building apps i don't have to mention it in my prompt anymore because it will know to design an extra version for the iphone duo and preview it in this nice ui here now this is just one example of what you can create with cloud mods if you want more ideas on what people have created you can simply go to x and type in cloud mods and you get to see a bunch more ideas now if you want to put all this knowledge into building a real app i recently recreated this app that helps people track their water intake and it's making 100k per month in the app store and i recently made a video on this where i teach you how to design a production ready app like this with beautiful motion graphics all by speaking to claude in plain english so if you want to watch that video you want to click here and i'll see you guys there

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

The Claude desktop app got a redesign big enough that people are calling it Claude 2.0. Instead of listing 15 features, the host builds a plant care app, a web dashboard and a launch video live, so each feature shows up where it actually earns its keep.

Frameworks