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AI Tips

Move Sessions Between Devices

Remote workflows are useful when a Claude Code task outlives the device you started on.

We already recommend Remote Control for monitoring long-running laptop sessions from your phone. Device handoff extends that idea: keep the work moving when you switch between laptop, phone, and cloud sessions.

Useful commands

Section titled “Useful commands”
  • /remote-control: control or monitor a running local session remotely.
  • /teleport: move a cloud session down to your laptop when you need local control.

Good uses

Section titled “Good uses”
  • Start a cloud task from your phone.
  • Continue a cloud session locally when you return to your laptop.
  • Monitor a laptop session while away.
  • Respond to approvals or questions without sitting at the terminal.

Practical advice

Section titled “Practical advice”

Use descriptive session names before handoff. It is much easier to resume or move work later when the session name matches the task.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

If /remote-control reports “Remote Control requires feature-flag evaluation”, check your privacy settings before anything else. The message names the variable that is blocking it. On versions before 2.1.154 the same configuration produced “Remote Control is not yet enabled for your account” instead.

Remote Control availability depends on feature-flag evaluation, and four variables turn that evaluation off:

Terminal window
echo $DISABLE_TELEMETRY
echo $DO_NOT_TRACK
echo $CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC
echo $DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK

An empty result does not clear them. These are often set under env in ~/.claude/settings.json, where a shell check shows nothing while Claude Code still applies them. Look in both places.

If one is set, delete the line. Do not set it to "0". For DISABLE_TELEMETRY and CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_NONESSENTIAL_TRAFFIC, Claude Code only checks for a non-empty value, so "0" and "false" still count as set. DISABLE_TELEMETRY: "0" behaves exactly like "1". DO_NOT_TRACK and DISABLE_GROWTHBOOK are read as normal booleans, so 0 does turn those two off.

Then:

  • Start a new session so the flags are fetched fresh.
  • Run claude doctor to see which eligibility check is failing.
  • If it is still unavailable, run claude auth logout and then claude auth login to refresh cached entitlements, and update Claude Code.

Other documented causes are unrelated to telemetry:

  • ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL disables Remote Control when it points anywhere other than api.anthropic.com, including an LLM gateway or proxy (as of v2.1.196). Unset it and restart.
  • API key authentication is not supported. Sign in with your Claude account.
  • Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud’s Agent Platform, and Microsoft Foundry sessions cannot use it.
  • On Team and Enterprise plans, Remote Control is off until an Owner enables it.

This is the tradeoff behind our telemetry settings. DISABLE_TELEMETRY is a reasonable default right up until you want Remote Control, and then it is the first thing to check.