Descriptions:
Anthropic’s computer use feature — now available in Claude Co-work — gives Claude the ability to operate any application on a macOS machine by taking screenshots and controlling the mouse and keyboard directly, without requiring a dedicated MCP integration. In this hands-on demo, Paul J Lipsky walks through the full setup process on a Mac Mini, covering the macOS accessibility and screen recording permissions required, and then puts the feature through two progressively complex real-world tests.
The first test is simple: ask Claude to read Apple Calendar without a calendar integration installed. Claude independently launches the app, navigates to today’s view, and returns the schedule — entirely unassisted. The second test is more ambitious: using Co-work’s Dispatch feature to send a task from an iPhone, Lipsky instructs Claude to find a photo he had texted to the Mac via iMessage, open it in Photos, use Apple’s Clean Up tool to remove a person from the background, and send the cleaned image back. Claude navigates the multi-app workflow correctly, handles a mid-task complication when the Clean Up AI model needs to download, and mostly completes the task — though response time slows noticeably in the final steps.
The video is refreshingly honest about current limitations alongside the genuine capability on display. Lipsky notes that Claude performs best on early navigation steps and slows when fine-grained UI targeting is required, and he identifies practical use cases — like routing screenshotted ideas from a phone into a structured database — that would work well with the current reliability level. A grounded first look at where autonomous computer control is actually useful today.
📺 Source: Paul J Lipsky · Published March 24, 2026
🏷️ Format: Hands On Build
