Claude is undoubtedly one of the better AIs out there. It also has some great features that other companies still need to catch up with, like Artifacts or Computer Use. But there are a few areas where Anthropic needs to play catch up. And it seems like the company has realized that and is doing just that now.

The company released an Android app for Claude a couple of months ago and recently also added support for dictation to its Android and iOS apps. Now it has also released desktop apps for Windows and Mac for Claude in beta.

The Windows and Mac desktop apps are available for download for anyone, regardless of whether they're a paid or a free user. The app has a similar interface to the web app, and accessing chats or starting new chats is still as easy as ever once you log in to your account.

To install the app, go to claude.ai/download and download the app corresponding to your system; it's available for Mac, Windows, and Windows for arm64.

Unfortunately, the process to install the app wasn't as seamless as I would have liked from the app. On both Mac and Windows, it took me some time to get the app up and running.

On my Mac, I had to go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Security and click on 'Open Anyway' as Mac otherwise refused to open Claude on account of not being able to verify that the app is malware-free.

On Windows as well, I ran into an error on the first attempt to install the app. On the second attempt, logging in to my account took forever.

Similar to the ChatGPT desktop app, you can use a keyboard shortcut to bring up the option to chat with Claude regardless of where you are on your computer. On Mac, the keyboard shortcut is Option + Space whereas on Windows, you can use the Ctrl + Alt + Space keyboard shortcut. You can also customize this keyboard shortcut from the app settings.

But that's where the similarity ends. Unlike the ChatGPT desktop app, Claude does not offer any additional functionality such as the options to send files or screenshots to the app from the command bar itself. The app, similar to the web app, also does not have the feature for Computer Use yet.

Still, if Claude is a big part of your day-to-day life, the fact that you don't need to navigate to the website every time you want to use it is a welcome one.