Anthropic tests new placement for Projects on Claude Desktop

Anthropic is testing a new placement for Projects in the navigation sidebar of its Claude desktop app, moving the Chat/Cowork mode toggle to the top of the window, mirroring changes OpenAI made to ChatGPT in June and July. The company is also developing a dedicated projects section for Claude Code on the web, aiming to give users a centralized overview of their workspaces. These experiments, spotted in recent builds, may be limited to A/B testing rather than an imminent rollout, consistent with Anthropic's pattern of trialing interface changes and rolling them back if they underperform.

Anthropic appears to be preparing another round of layout changes for the Claude https://www.testingcatalog.com/tag/claude/ desktop app, barely two weeks after Chat and Cowork moved into a shared Home. Work surfacing in recent builds shows the toggle between the two modes leaving the prompt bar, where it landed with the July 7 update https://www.testingcatalog.com/anthropic-brings-claude-cowork-to-web-and-mobile-for-max-users/ , and moving to the top of the window. The placement mirrors the merged ChatGPT desktop app, where OpenAI put its mode switcher in the top-left corner after folding the Codex app into ChatGPT on July 9 https://www.testingcatalog.com/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-for-pro-enterprise-and-edu-plans/ . Given how fresh the current design is, this looks like a candidate for an A/B test with a small group of users rather than an imminent rollout. The second change concerns projects. Anthropic is testing a way to surface them directly in the navigation sidebar, above recent conversations, with options to pin them, sort them, and decide what shows up there. OpenAI shipped a similar treatment for ChatGPT in June, letting users pin chats and projects and regroup the Recents list, and demand for that kind of sidebar control had been building for a long time. For people juggling many workspaces in Claude, having projects one click away instead of behind a separate page would be a small but meaningful shift. Claude Code is getting attention as well. On the web, a dedicated projects section is in the works, where users would be able to create new projects and customize them. Today, Claude Code scopes its work to a single folder or repository, so a management layer on top could give desktop and web users a proper overview of everything Claude is building for them. Taken together, the changes fit Anthropic's current push to make the desktop app the center of gravity for deep work while Cowork expands to web and mobile in beta. Whether any of this ships is another question, though, as Anthropic is known for experimenting with interface ideas and quietly rolling them back when they underperform.