Every Way to Run Claude Code From Your Phone, Compared
There isn't one answer to "how do I use Claude Code on my phone" — there are at least six, and they solve different problems. Here's a map before the details, so you can jump straight to the section that matches what you actually need.
Pick your starting question
| What you need | Start with |
|---|---|
| I want the official, no-setup path and I don't mind a plan requirement | Cloud sessions or Remote Control (below) |
| I want to hand Desktop a task and check back later | Dispatch (below) |
| I want a self-hosted web UI built specifically for Claude Code | CloudCLI, self-hosted or their Cloud plan (below) |
| I already have SSH working and just want the raw terminal | SSH client + tmux (below) |
| I want a phone-native touch keyboard, replay, and push notifications, self-hosted | a self-hosted, phone-native terminal client (below) |
If none of those descriptions fit yet, keep reading — the three sections after the comparison table cover cases where the answer is "don't self-host anything."
The official app: three different modes, not one
The Claude app itself isn't a single mobile experience — it's three, and which one you're using changes what "your phone" is actually connected to. (Source: official docs)
Cloud sessions
Work runs on Anthropic's own infrastructure, not your laptop. This is the only official option where your machine can be fully off — start a task, close the lid, come back later.
Remote Control
Your phone drives a Claude Code (or Claude Desktop) session already running on your own machine. It's currently a research preview, available on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, with Team and Enterprise defaulting to off until an org owner turns it on. (Source: official docs) Because it's tethered to a live local process, it inherits that process's limits: after roughly ten minutes without network, the session times out and the underlying process exits, and closing the terminal or editor it's attached to kills it outright — Anthropic's own docs recommend running it inside tmux or screen for exactly that reason. (Source: official docs)
Dispatch
You send a task to Claude Desktop on your own machine and check back on results later, rather than driving a live session in real time. It's Pro and Max only — Team and Enterprise accounts don't have it. (Source: official docs)
CloudCLI (claudecodeui): a purpose-built self-hosted web UI
CloudCLI is an open-source web interface you point at your own machine, licensed AGPL-3.0-or-later, with 13.2k stars and 1.8k forks as of today. (Source: official repo, re-checked 2026-08-07) It's the most direct alternative to what this article's own site is offering — a self-hosted web layer over Claude Code — and its scope is broader than a single tool: it also drives Codex CLI, Cursor CLI, and other coding agents from the same interface.
Self-hosting it needs Node.js v22+ and your own reverse proxy for HTTPS if you want to reach it from outside your LAN. (Source: official repo) There's also a hosted option now: CloudCLI Cloud is a commercial offering that's already live — the README lists it first in Quick Start, marked "(Recommended)," starting at €7/month, and its FAQ states plainly: close your laptop, the agent keeps running. (Source: official repo) That's something no self-hosted tool — PocketShell included — can offer by definition; it needs your machine to run its agent somewhere.
The project currently has 103 open issues, two of which are the ones discussed in this article: one where the chat's streaming response can drop on iOS Safari (#554), and one where, on v1.35.1, the shell terminal can silently freeze after the app goes to the background on iOS while chat keeps updating (#953). (Reported by a user; not reproduced by us) (Reported by a user; not reproduced by us) These are open, active-project issue reports, not a verdict on whether the tool works for you — a young, actively maintained project having open mobile bug reports is normal, not disqualifying.
A bare SSH client + tmux
If you already have a machine reachable over SSH, the lowest-dependency path is a mobile SSH client (Termius, Blink, JuiceSSH) connecting straight into a tmux session where claude is already running. It's the most flexible option here — nothing to install on the server beyond what you already have — but it's also the most manual: no push notification when a task finishes, no touch-optimized key row for Ctrl/Alt/Esc, and you're responsible for remembering session names and reattaching yourself.
Where PocketShell fits
PocketShell is a single self-hosted binary purpose-built for this exact gap: a phone-native client for a persistent terminal session, not a general SSH app and not a CloudCLI-style multi-agent dashboard. The tmux session on your machine is the source of truth; the phone is a thin, encrypted (Noise IK) window onto it. Reconnecting after a drop replays only what you missed by sequence number, rather than leaving you to scroll. Because the whole interaction is touch-first, it ships three selectable on-screen keyboard layouts (Classic, Layered, Flick) plus a separate IME buffer for composing full strings before sending, and it wires push notifications (Web Push) and outbound webhooks directly to session-completion hooks for four CLI tools — Claude Code, Codex, opencode, and Kimi CLI — so you get a notification instead of having to poll the screen.
What it deliberately isn't: it has no cloud-hosted execution mode, so unlike Cloud sessions your machine still has to stay on; it has no team or org permission system, just per-device pairing, so it's built for one person's own machines rather than a shared team deployment; and it's a PWA, not something installed through an app store.
Reality-checked comparison
| Option | Where it runs | Machine must stay on | Cost | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud sessions | Anthropic's infrastructure | No | Included in Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise | Only official option that survives your machine being off |
| Remote Control | Your machine | Yes | Included in Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise (Team/Enterprise off by default) | Research preview; ~10 min offline timeout; process dies with its terminal |
| Dispatch | Claude Desktop on your machine | Yes | Pro/Max only | Async — send a task, check back, not a live session |
| CloudCLI, self-hosted | Your machine | Yes | Free, open source | Multi-agent dashboard; two known mobile issues, both open |
| CloudCLI Cloud | CloudCLI's infrastructure | No | From €7/month | Hosted, so your laptop can close — no self-hosted tool matches this |
| SSH client + tmux | Your machine | Yes | Cost of an SSH app you may already own | Most flexible, most manual — no notifications, no touch keyboard |
| PocketShell | Your machine | Yes | Free, self-hosted (Apache-2.0) | Phone-native keyboard + replay + push, single-purpose terminal client |
Three cases where you shouldn't self-host anything
Being direct about this is the only way a comparison written by one of the options can be trusted at all, so:
- Your computer needs to be off sometimes. Every self-hosted option on this page — CloudCLI's self-hosted mode and PocketShell both — needs a machine that's on to reach. If the plan is "close the laptop, keep working," that's what Cloud sessions or CloudCLI Cloud are for, not this list.
- You just want to glance at progress occasionally. If checking in once in a while is the whole use case, official Remote Control already does that with zero extra setup, as long as your account has the right plan tier. Standing up a self-hosted service for occasional glances is more effort than the problem deserves.
- You don't want to run and maintain a service. Self-hosting anything — CloudCLI, PocketShell, or otherwise — means you're the one keeping a process alive, applying updates, and troubleshooting when it breaks. If that's not a tradeoff you want to make, the hosted options above (Cloud sessions, Dispatch, CloudCLI Cloud) exist specifically so you don't have to.