Remote Control: iOS app drops connection on background/foreground, no auto-reconnect, no session cleanup

[MikeBarta]

Remote Control sessions between Claude Code CLI (Linux) and the Claude iOS app are unreliable when the phone app is backgrounded.

Behavior

• Connection works fine while the Claude iOS app is in the foreground — messages flow both ways
• Switching to another iOS app and returning to Claude kills the connection
• The app still shows the session as "active" but responses stop flowing
• Requires /remote-control disconnect + reconnect from the CLI to restore the session
• After /clear in the terminal, the phone shows a zombie session — appears active but won't connect at all

Feature requests

1. Auto-reconnect on foreground resume — when the iOS app returns from background, it should automatically restore the WebSocket connection without requiring CLI-side intervention
2. Delete archived sessions — old/dead remote sessions accumulate in the iOS app's archive with no way to remove them
3. Graceful /clear handling — clearing conversation in CLI should either update the remote view or cleanly disconnect it, not leave it in a zombie state

Environment

• Claude Code CLI on Ubuntu Linux 6.17
• Claude iOS app (latest) on iPhone
• Same local WiFi network
• Connection is local (not routed through external services)

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. Remote control session fails to resync after connection drop #28571
2. Remote Control: mobile app connection dies overnight while tmux session stays alive #28914
3. Remote Control: sessions go stale mid-conversation, /rc reconnect fails #29313

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[joshmeads]

Yeah a few times I've had to force close the app and reopen it to get it to reconnect correctly.

I've also had issues where that doesn't fix it if it's requesting permissions. No matter what I click it gets stuck on the permission prompt until I can get back to the terminal version.

[SerkanGezici]

Still experiencing this on v2.1.76 (WSL2 Ubuntu + iOS Claude app).

Additional observation: the statusline sometimes shows "Remote Control active" even though the connection is actually dead. The phone can't send messages but the CLI doesn't know the relay is broken. Only fix is manually running /remote-control → Disconnect → /remote-control → Connect.

The silent "active but dead" state is worse than a visible disconnect because there's no indication anything is wrong until you try to use it from the phone.

+1 for auto-reconnect and accurate heartbeat-based status detection.

[lsl9119]

▎ Same issue on Ubuntu (VMware) + Claude iOS app, confirmed still occurring on v2.1.80 (auto-updated 2026-03-20).

▎ Observed pattern from session JSONL logs: three separate bridge sessions within 100 minutes in a single conversation:
▎ 09:15Z session_01SCteEJg... ← initial
▎ 10:47Z session_01DaUXbME... ← reconnected (~1.5h)
▎ 10:57Z session_01FBEiJjP... ← reconnected again (10 min later)
▎ The 10-minute gap is new behavior not seen before 2.1.80. Each reconnection invalidates the session code, requiring manual re-entry on
iOS — unusable with screen lock.

▎ Related: #31853 (relay polling regression).