Your links
- Watch the full Claude 2.0 video: all 7 changes, how I actually use them, and how Claude now compares with Codex.
- Download the Claude desktop app: everything below lives in the desktop app.
The Claude desktop app completely changed in a few weeks. Honestly, it feels like Claude 2.0. It's not just for coders anymore.
The 7 biggest changes
- Projects and threads. One chat that coordinates the work. You can spawn 10 new threads from a single prompt instead of opening new sessions every time. I gave one project the job of planning my week, managing my email and building a live dashboard, and it spun up its own threads for each part.
- Side chats. Ask a quick question, like "what's the status?", without interrupting the main chat.
- Split view. Drag a chat from the sidebar to the side and work on two at once.
- New layout. A to-do list inside the chat, the option to open your chats on your phone, and a new auto mode instead of bypassing permissions.
- Docs, slides and sheets. I asked it to make my weekly planning as slides and it rendered them right inside the app, so I don't need to go to Google.
- Slash commands. lets you set a style like "be a contrarian", so Claude gets critical of what you say. checks your environment.
- Mods. Reshape the whole app the way you want, for example a status bar that shows how much you have left in your 5-hour window.
Try these first
- Start a project, give it one big objective, and let it spawn the threads.
- Set an output style with before you brainstorm.
- Run once to check your setup.
My take: Claude has changed even more than Codex has, and it's built for the power user who wants to customise everything. The full video walks through each change on screen.