Remote Control (/remote-control) disconnects frequently

[daniawclothes-hue]

Description

The /remote-control feature disconnects frequently and automatically without any user action. The session drops every few minutes and needs to be restarted manually.

Environment

• Claude Code version: 2.1.72
• OS: macOS Darwin 25.3.0 (Apple Silicon)
• Location: Egypt
• ISP: Egyptian ISP (WE/Orange)
• Shell: zsh

What I tried (none of these helped)

1. TCP keepalive — set net.inet.tcp.keepidle=15000, keepintvl=5000, always_keepalive=1
2. DNS — changed to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) + Google (8.8.8.8)
3. Background HTTPS pings to api.anthropic.com every 20s to keep the network path alive
4. VPN (Mullvad) — connected to Sweden server, still disconnects
5. Mac sleep is disabled — caffeinate is running, sleep 0

Since VPN didn't fix it, the issue is not network/ISP related. The disconnection appears to be in the remote-control feature itself.

Steps to reproduce

1. Start a Claude Code session
2. Run /remote-control
3. Connect from claude.ai/code or phone
4. Wait a few minutes — connection drops automatically

Expected behavior

Remote control session should stay connected as long as the terminal is open and network is available.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[SotongDJ]

I can confirm this bug and provide evidence that the disconnection is definitively server-side.

Environment

	Device A (RPi 500)	Device B (WSL2)
Hardware	Raspberry Pi 500	Windows PC (WSL2)
OS	Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm), aarch64	Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS, x86_64
Kernel	6.12.62+rpt-rpi-2712	6.6.87.2-microsoft-standard-WSL2
tmux	3.3a	3.2a
Install	curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash	same
Network	Independent (different physical location)	Independent (different physical location)

Key Evidence: Simultaneous Drop Across Two Independent Networks

Both devices dropped within ~45 seconds of each other, despite different session ages and completely separate networks in different physical locations.

WSL2 (session age ~20min):

[11:51:44] Error: Environment env_01QnEe55nzznkkdp6qvHCqPx not found.
[11:51:44] Shutting down 1 active session(s)…
2026-03-11 11:51:45 EXIT    claude rc (code 0, 1205s)

RPi 500 (session age ~10min):

[11:52:29] Error: Environment env_011B6Bv7sBt4NwKzZ35tWj2J not found.
[11:52:29] Shutting down 1 active session(s)…
2026-03-11 11:52:30 EXIT    claude rc (code 0, 605s)

A per-session timeout would drop them 10 minutes apart — not simultaneously. This points to a server-side event (restart, cleanup job, deployment) around 11:51–11:52 UTC+8.

Additional Observations

• The browser reflects the drop before the CLI does — https://claude.ai/code/session_{id} redirects to https://claude.ai/code/family while the CLI still shows "Connected", sometimes for 10+ minutes
• Active (non-idle) sessions are dropped mid-task — one drop occurred while Claude was waiting for tool approval
• Regular claude (local, no remote-control) on the same machine and network runs stably for 12+ hours — confirming the issue is specific to remote-control
• Typical observed lifetime: 10 min–3~4 hours

This confirms your finding that the issue is not network/ISP related. The server is terminating environments unexpectedly.

[philooo2]

same here. remote-control drops

[saju01]

+1 — experiencing the same on macOS Darwin 25.3.0 (ARM64) with Claude iOS app.

Specifics from our case:

• Both Mac and iPhone active, same WiFi, screen on, stable network
• Drops happen randomly during long sessions (2+ hours)
• bypassPermissions mode — no prompts blocking
• Sometimes reconnects, sometimes gets stuck in "reconnecting" loop
• Only fix is disconnect + reconnect remote control manually

Additional issue: We also hit API 400 errors after context compaction drops media_type from base64 images (#36554). When that happens, the remote control sees the API failure as a connection issue and enters the reconnect loop permanently — it can never recover because every API call returns 400.

Workaround: Running Claude Code in tmux and using claude --continue after drops.

[BOBPG]

Same here. /remote-control shows “connected” and it previously worked perfectly. Right now, not even the web URL shows any updates, nor does the Claude iOS App. When it does work, it often drops—especially as chats get larger. I have to close the connection (on my PC) and reconnect before I can see updates again, and even that workaround isn’t working anymore.

[TheNewJavaman]

I'm seeing the same thing on Ubuntu 24.04 and 25.10

[pwinnski]

The server side of /remote-control seems quite unstable, making the feature useless. Maybe a persistent server-side service needs more careful supervision?

Every time I try to use it, it fails, and when I return to the local session, it's "Remote Control reconnecting..." forever.

2.1.81 (Claude Code) on macOS 26.3.1

[theonlyquics]

It does connect in my case, however I dont get the latest state on other devices, Claude Code crafted an issue report for me:

Summary

Remote Control fails to sync the latest conversation state to connected clients (both mobile app and Claude Desktop). Both clients show a stale state from an earlier point in the conversation, despite the main CLI session being further ahead.

Environment

• Claude Code CLI: Running on Windows 11 Pro (EVO-X2 Workstation, 128GB RAM)
• Model: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context)
• Claude Mobile App: Android (com.anthropic.claude)
• Claude Desktop: Same machine as CLI
• Session name: setup-coding-team-project
• Date: 2026-03-25, ~07:50 UTC+1

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start a long Claude Code CLI session with many agent tool calls (subagents)
2. Session runs for several hours, accumulating significant context (~500k+ tokens)
3. A large agent task completes (in this case: 42 tool calls, ~70k tokens, ~7 min duration)
4. Open Claude Mobile App, connect to the session via Remote Control
5. Open Claude Desktop on the same machine, view the session

Expected Behavior

• Both clients should display the current/latest conversation state
• Messages sent from the mobile app should arrive in the CLI session

Actual Behavior

Reading (partial failure)

• Both clients (mobile + Desktop) show a stale state — specifically the conversation state BEFORE the last large agent task completed
• The latest agent result and subsequent user/assistant messages are missing
• Both clients show the exact same stale state, suggesting the issue is server-side, not client-side caching
• Claude Desktop was NOT previously connected to this session, so it cannot be a locally cached older version

Writing (complete failure)

• Mobile app allows typing and sending messages
• App shows "Cooking..." as if processing
• The sent message NEVER arrives in the CLI session
• No error is shown to the user on mobile

Screenshots

Three screenshots from the Android mobile app are available:

1. Initial connection: "Verbindung laeuft..." (connecting), empty chat area
2. After loading: Shows conversation content, but from BEFORE the latest state
3. User sends message: "Gib mir zuerst noch einen Ueberblick ueber die weiteren Schritte" — shows "Cooking..." but message never arrives in CLI

Hypothesis

The sync failure appears to correlate with a large agent task completion:

• Last synced state: Just before Phase T1 MCP-Server build (agent with 42 tool calls, ~70k tokens, ~7 min runtime)
• Missing state: The agent result, subsequent conversation turns, and another agent task (Phase T1 completion)
• Possible causes:
  • Server-side state serialization has a size or time limit
  • Context compression creates a window where the latest state is not yet available to Remote Control
  • Large agent results are buffered before being committed to the syncable state
  • The conversation exceeded a sync threshold (total session: ~500k+ tokens, 30+ agent dispatches)

Impact

• Severity: High — Remote Control is unreliable for long sessions
• User impact: Cannot monitor or contribute to long-running sessions from mobile
• Silent failure: No error message shown, user believes messages are being processed

Workaround

None identified. The only option is to continue using the CLI directly.

[smartwatermelon]

Tonight, on version 2.1.112 (Claude Code), I'm seeing Remote Control disconnect after a minute or less. I can have a CCCLI session open in Terminal and in the iOS Claude app, type something in the Terminal, see the session become active in the iOS app, and then it disappears from the iOS app after just a few seconds.
I have done the usual troubleshooting: made sure everything is up to date, logged out and back in from both CCCLI and the iOS app. It does work briefly -- very briefly -- and then just disconnects.