Anthropic added a built-in Chromium-based browser to Claude's Cowork desktop application, giving the AI assistant its own dedicated browsing environment separate from users' day-to-day browser1,3. The company announced the feature on Wednesday, August 26.
The built-in browser is rolling out to paying Pro, Max, and Team plan subscribers across Mac, Windows, and Linux. It replaces the Chrome extension that was previously required for Claude to access the web, a workaround Anthropic had updated as recently as two weeks prior to this release.
The original Claude Chrome extension launched exactly a year earlier, on August 26, 2025. That extension was itself updated just two weeks before the built-in browser shipped, essentially turning it into a Cowork session.
The new browser operates inside the Cowork desktop app rather than piggybacking on a user's personal browser session. Claude can import logins from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on macOS, and from Firefox on Windows and Linux. Anthropic excludes logins from banking and email providers, as well as single sign-on sites, from the import feature.
Anthropic acknowledged that there is "always a risk of prompt injections when letting an agent loose on the web".
OpenAI recently gave up its ambitions to build Atlas, its standalone browser, and instead added browsing to its ChatGPT desktop app. ANALYSIS Anthropic's release closes a capability gap between the two desktop products.
By sandboxing Claude's browsing in a dedicated Chromium instance rather than relying on a user's personal browser, Anthropic draws a clearer boundary between the agent's web activity and the user's own sessions, a design choice that addresses some, though not all, of the prompt-injection risk the company flagged.
The built-in browser can complete web operations independently, according to a report from AIBase2. Anthropic described the prior Chrome extension approach as requiring users to give Claude access to their own browser through the extension in order to use the web in Cowork.