Which app should I use on Windows or Linux?

On Windows or Linux, use the Claude Code desktop app, the VS Code Agents window, ChatML or Claude Squad. All four run on Windows and Linux. Crystl is macOS only, so it is not an option on either platform.

Desktop Apps for Multiple Claude Code Sessions

Q: Can the Claude Code desktop app open more than one project at a time?

Yes, indirectly. In the Claude Code desktop app each session carries its own project folder, so two sessions can sit in two different repositories and run side by side. What the desktop app does not give you is a persistent per-project workspace view. Crystl and JetBrains Air are built around that idea instead: Crystl calls a project a gem and a session inside it a shard, and JetBrains Air keeps several projects open with their own sessions and tracks unread updates and changed files in each.

Q: Do I need an app at all to run parallel Claude Code sessions?

No. The Claude Code CLI already does it. Run claude --worktree feature-auth in one terminal and claude --worktree fix-login in another, and each session gets its own git worktree and branch under .claude/worktrees/. Name sessions with claude -n and come back to them with claude --resume. An app is worth it when you want one screen showing every session's state rather than a row of terminal tabs.

Yes. Anthropic ships an official Claude Code desktop app, and its Code tab runs several sessions in parallel from a sidebar. Each session keeps its own chat history and its own project folder. The Claude Code desktop app runs on macOS, Windows and Linux (beta). Claude Code needs a paid Claude plan — Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise.

That covers most people. It does not cover everyone. You may want a persistent view of several projects at once, an isolated git worktree per agent, a terminal UI you can run over SSH, or cost tracking per session. Ten other tools do those things. This page covers all eleven: what each one does, who it suits, and where it falls down.

Updated October 20, 2026. Every platform, price and feature claim below was read from the product's own site or repository on that date. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, this page says so rather than guessing.

Before you install anything: what Claude Code already does

The Claude Code CLI runs parallel sessions on its own, and most roundups skip this. Worth knowing before you go shopping, because it changes what you actually need an app for.

Pass --worktree (or -w) with a name and Claude Code creates an isolated git worktree and starts a session in it. By default the worktree lands under .claude/worktrees/<name>/ on a new branch called worktree-<name>:

claude --worktree feature-auth

Run that again with a different name in another terminal and you have a second isolated session. Each one edits its own copy of the files. Claude Code also blocks edits and git commands that reach back into the main checkout, so the two sessions cannot stand on each other.

Sessions are saved as you work, at ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl. Name one with claude -n auth-refactor or /rename, then come back to it:

claude --continue reopens the most recent session in the current directory.
claude --resume opens the session picker; claude --resume <name> goes straight to one.
/resume switches sessions from inside a running one.
In the picker, Ctrl+W widens to every worktree of the repository and Ctrl+A to every project on the machine.

So the honest framing is this. You do not need an app to run Claude Code in parallel. You need an app when you want one screen that shows what every session is doing. Which one is waiting on an approval. Which one finished. Which one is still grinding. Right now you find that out by cycling through terminal tabs, and that is the job every tool below is competing for.

Claude Code desktop app

Anthropic's own app — parallel sessions in a sidebar, on all three platforms

First-party Included with a paid plan macOS / Windows / Linux (beta)

The Claude Code desktop app takes the top spot for three reasons. It is free with a plan you probably already pay for. It runs on every major platform. And it does the core job with no workaround. Start here, and only move on if you hit one of its walls.

The Claude desktop app has three tabs: Chat for conversations, Cowork for longer agentic work, and Code for software development. In the Code tab, each conversation is a session with its own chat history and its own project folder, independent of any other session. The sidebar lists your sessions and lets you run several in parallel.

New session — Cmd+N on macOS, Ctrl+N on Windows, so a second task is one keystroke away.
Cycle sessions — Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab.
Two at once — hold Cmd or Ctrl and click a session in the sidebar to view two side by side.
Group, sort, filter and archive — the session list has an icon for grouping and sorting, and an Archived tab, which is what keeps a long list usable.
Worktree-backed sessions — the Claude Code desktop app can run a session in its own git worktree, so parallel sessions in one repository do not collide.
Built in — a terminal pane, a file pane, a browser pane for previewing the app you are building, a diff view for review, and PR features including Auto-fix and Merge when ready.
Elsewhere — cloud sessions on any paid plan, remote machines over SSH, and Remote Control for reaching a session from another device.

Claude Code runs inside the Claude desktop app rather than as a separate download. Get it from claude.com/download: macOS, Windows (x64 and ARM64), and Linux in beta via apt or a .deb for Ubuntu and Debian.

Best for: Almost everyone, and certainly anyone asking this question for the first time. It is the default answer and it is free with your plan.

Where it falls down: The Claude Code desktop app organises around sessions, not around projects. There is no persistent per-project workspace you switch between, so a consultant juggling eight client repositories manages that in one flat session list. Linux is still beta and limited to apt or .deb. Computer use is a research preview and needs Pro or Max. And multi-account switching is a real gap — issue #18435 is an open request for exactly that, with 926 thumbs-up and 209 comments as of 20 October 2026, from consultants and enterprise users who sign in and out several times a day. No Anthropic maintainer has commented on it.

Crystl

A macOS terminal organised around projects, with a session per agent

Terminal Free tier macOS only

Crystl is a native macOS terminal built for running several coding agents across several projects at once. Crystl answers the second half of the question — different projects — more directly than the Claude Code desktop app does. Projects are the top-level thing Crystl organises around.

The model is gems and shards: every project you open is a gem, and every session inside it is a shard. Each shard can run in its own isolated git worktree, so two agents edit the same repository without fighting over the files.

Isolated parallel sessions — a git worktree per shard.
Floating approval cards — a card reaches you when an agent needs permission, so you are not hunting for which pane stopped.
Agent activity and token tracking — one view of what every agent is doing, with token and cost rollups.
Workbench — a shared task list the agents in a project read and write.
Split view, SSH remote development, and MCP server config.
An iPhone companion app for approving and steering agents away from the desk.

Crystl runs Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, Kimi Code, opencode, aider, goose and Ollama, with Claude Code and Codex getting the closest support. Pricing on crystl.dev: the apprentice tier is $0/forever and includes isolated parallel sessions, floating cards, activity tracking, split view, token monitoring, the workbench, MCP servers and SSH, with scheduling capped at 3. crystl guild is $170/year and adds agent orchestration from the CLI, custom heroes, unlimited scheduling, sequence automation, iPhone access from anywhere, a prompt library, workspace formations and up to 3 devices.

Best for: Mac developers and agencies who keep four or more repositories open at once and want each project to be a place they switch to, not a filter on a session list.

Where it falls down: Crystl is macOS only — a native Swift app that uses macOS features like the Keychain — so on Windows or Linux it is not an option at all, and the Claude Code desktop app, the VS Code Agents window, ChatML or Claude Squad are the answer instead. It is also a terminal replacement, which is a bigger change to your setup than installing an extension. And the per-project model only pays off if you genuinely work across several repositories; for one repository and three branches, the first-party app does the same job for nothing extra.

VS Code Agents window

Parallel agent sessions inside the editor you already have open

IDE Free editor macOS / Windows / Linux

VS Code treats a session as "the unit of work with an agent in Visual Studio Code", and VS Code sessions "can run in parallel and keep running when you switch between them". The unified view is called the Agents window, and it runs sessions across local, background and cloud environments in one place. Claude is a supported harness alongside Copilot, and VS Code supports worktree isolation where a session's changes must stay separate.

The Claude Code extension for VS Code is the other half of this. The extension needs VS Code 1.94.0 or later and a paid Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) or a Claude Console account, with no API key. Run Open in New Tab or Open in New Window from the Command Palette to start another conversation, each with its own history and context. A sessions list lives in the Activity Bar. You can group sessions and filter them by Needs input, Working or Completed. That filter answers "who is waiting on me" faster than anything else in this roundup.

Best for: Anyone already living in VS Code who wants parallel sessions without adopting a new app, and anyone on Windows or Linux who wants a GUI with status filtering.

Where it falls down: VS Code is one window per workspace, so several projects at once means several VS Code windows, and you are back to hunting across windows. The standalone Agent Sessions view is disabled by default and is being removed in a future release, which means the surface is still moving. And a VS Code sessions list is scoped to the folder you have open, not to everything on your machine.

Claude Squad

A terminal UI that runs each agent in its own tmux session and git worktree

Terminal UI Free & open source (AGPL-3.0) Cross-platform

Claude Squad is the strongest free, open-source, cross-platform pick here, and the most popular by some distance. It had 8,634 stars and 632 forks when the repository was read on 20 October 2026. Claude Squad "manages multiple Claude Code, Codex, Gemini (and other local agents including Aider) in separate workspaces", and its current repository description adds OpenCode and Amp. So it is the right answer if you run more than one vendor's agent.

The isolation is two layers, and both matter. Claude Squad uses tmux to give each agent its own terminal session, and git worktrees to give each one its own branch and files. So tasks run in the background, and you review the changes before applying them.

Claude Squad installs through Homebrew or a manual script, and the binary is cs. It needs tmux and the GitHub CLI (gh) present first.

Best for: Developers on Linux, anyone who wants no vendor in the loop, and anyone running Claude Code next to Codex, Gemini or Aider on the same machine.

Where it falls down: Claude Squad is a terminal UI, so there is no diff viewer, no browser preview and no cost dashboard — it manages agents, it does not give you an IDE. It needs tmux and gh installed before it will run, which rules it out as a hand-it-to-a-teammate recommendation. The repository's own known issues include "Failed to start new session" errors that need the underlying agent updated. It organises around workspaces rather than projects, so cross-repository work is still your own filing problem. And it is the least fresh of the actively-used tools here: the last push was 20 August 2026, two months before this page was written. If that bothers you, ccmanager below does the same job and was pushed to two days before this page went up.

ccmanager

Worktree session manager with live status, and no tmux to learn

Terminal UI Free & open source (MIT) Cross-platform

ccmanager is the freshest tool in this roundup and the easiest of the terminal options to actually start using. ccmanager is a TUI that runs multiple coding agent sessions across git worktrees and projects, and you install it with npm install -g ccmanager or just run npx ccmanager.

Two things separate ccmanager from Claude Squad. First, ccmanager has no tmux dependency — the README calls it "completely self-contained", so there is nothing to configure or learn first. Second, ccmanager shows real-time session state: whether each session is waiting for input, processing, or idle. That is the "who is waiting on me" problem answered directly, which most terminal tools leave you to work out by looking.

ccmanager also creates, merges and deletes worktrees from inside the app, and can copy Claude Code session data between worktrees so a conversation carries over. It supports Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Cursor Agent, Copilot CLI, Cline CLI, OpenCode, Kimi CLI, MiniMax Code and Grok Build. It is MIT licensed, had 1,266 stars when the repository was read on 20 October 2026, and was pushed to two days before that.

Best for: Anyone who wants Claude Squad's job done without installing tmux first, and anyone who wants per-session status without a desktop app.

Where it falls down: ccmanager has roughly a seventh of Claude Squad's users, so there is less written about it when you get stuck. Its README calls Auto Approval "experimental". Session restoration reruns commands rather than restoring conversation history or terminal output, so a restored session is not where you left it. And like every terminal option here, ccmanager gives you no diff viewer and no cost tracking.

ChatML

Open-source desktop app with diff review, cost tracking and PR workflow

Desktop app Open source (GPL-3.0) macOS / Windows / Linux

ChatML calls itself "Mission control for Claude Code", and the pitch is to "orchestrate parallel Claude sessions, review every diff, track costs, and ship PRs — all from one place". ChatML is the pick when the bottleneck is not starting sessions but reviewing what they produced.

Parallel sessions in isolated worktrees, one per feature.
A built-in diff viewer with three review depths: Quick, Deep and Security.
Per-session cost tracking in real time, with budget limits — the clearest cost story of any app here.
PR creation and management inside the app.
Linear issue linking and MCP server support.

ChatML runs on macOS 13.0+, Windows 10+ and Linux x64, and states it is "100% Open Source" under GPL-3.0, built with Tauri, Rust, Go and Next.js. The site publishes a download and no price. As of 20 October 2026 the site states no pricing at all. Treat ChatML as free and self-hosted rather than assuming a hidden plan.

Best for: Developers whose real problem is reviewing parallel agent output, and anyone who needs per-session spend visible with a budget cap.

Where it falls down: ChatML is session-and-feature oriented, not project oriented, so it does not solve the several-repositories-at-once problem any better than the first-party app. Its site carries no pricing, no roadmap and no company detail, which is a real risk signal for a tool you would put in a team's workflow. And review depths named Quick, Deep and Security are the vendor's own labels, with no published method behind them.

JetBrains Air

Several projects open at once, each with its own agent sessions

IDE / web / CLI Limited rollout Credits pricing

JetBrains Air describes itself as "one system for building software with agents", and it is the only tool here besides Crystl that puts projects at the top level. JetBrains Air lets you "keep several projects open, each with its own sessions, and track unread updates, changed files, and outgoing commits in all of them". That is close to a word-for-word answer to the question this page is about.

JetBrains Air runs in three places: JetBrains IDEs, the web at air.jetbrains.cloud, and a CLI. Mobile is listed as coming soon. It works with Claude Agent, Codex, Junie, Copilot, OpenCode, and other agents through ACP.

Best for: Teams already standardised on JetBrains IDEs, and anyone who wants unread-change tracking across several projects rather than a session list.

Where it falls down: You may not be able to use JetBrains Air yet. The page says cloud runs "are already available for some customers in JetBrains IDEs and the browser" and that "rollout to all remaining customers will happen gradually over the coming months", with the Teams tier offering early access — so this is a preview, not a product you can decide on today. Pricing is a credit system with "JetBrains AI with credits billed at public API rates", and JetBrains publishes no figures. Credit-metered agent work is also hard to budget compared with a flat plan.

Nimbalyst

A visual agent workspace plus a wiki your agents write

Desktop app Free for individuals macOS / Windows / Linux

Nimbalyst is "a wiki your coding agents write for you, and a visual workspace for working with Claude Code, Codex and other agents". Nimbalyst is the odd one out here, in a useful way. Its main bet is not session switching. It is what the agents leave behind, as documentation a team can read later.

Nimbalyst is open source under the MIT licence, and it is the project formerly called Crystal — the stravu/crystal repository now reads "(Crystal is now Nimbalyst)" and has not been pushed to since February 2026. The nimbalyst/nimbalyst repository had 1,946 stars on 20 October 2026 and was pushed to the day before. Nimbalyst runs on macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux, with iOS and Android companion apps, and works with Claude Code, Codex, Cowork, Cursor, VS Code and any MCP agent, including as a free plugin for those tools. Pricing on nimbalyst.com: the Nimbalyst App is $0, the wiki in your coding agent is $0, and Wiki Teams is $20 / user / month or $200 / user / year, currently "free during Beta".

Best for: Teams whose pain is that nobody knows what the agents changed last week. The wiki angle is genuinely different from everything else on this list.

Where it falls down: Nimbalyst is a weaker answer than the first six entries to the narrow question of managing many sessions across many projects, because the wiki is the centre of gravity and session management is the surrounding workspace. Wiki Teams is in beta, so today's free price is not a commitment. And a wiki agents write for you is only worth having if your team reads it.

tmux

The zero-cost baseline that every other terminal tool is built on

Multiplexer Free & open source (ISC) Unix-like

tmux is "a terminal multiplexer: it enables a number of terminals to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen". For this job tmux is a serious answer, not a consolation prize — one tmux session per project, one window per Claude Code session, and you have the whole thing for nothing.

The feature that makes tmux worth it here is detach and reattach: you detach from a screen, the work keeps running in the background, and you reattach later. So a Claude Code session survives closing your laptop lid or an SSH connection dropping, which is something several of the GUI apps above cannot claim. tmux runs on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux, macOS and Solaris, under the ISC licence. Claude Squad is built on it.

Best for: Developers working on a remote box over SSH, anyone who already knows tmux, and anyone who wants sessions that outlive the terminal they started in.

Where it falls down: tmux knows nothing about Claude Code. There is no approval notification, no token count, no diff review, and no way to see which agent is waiting for you without looking at each window in turn — which is the exact problem the GUI apps exist to solve. It also has a real learning curve and its own config language. And tmux gives you no git isolation, so you still pair it with claude --worktree or git worktree add yourself.

Zellij

A friendlier multiplexer for people who bounced off tmux

Multiplexer Free & open source macOS / Windows / Linux

Zellij is a "Terminal Workspace with Batteries Included", and it is the multiplexer to try if tmux keybindings were the thing that stopped you. Zellij does the same structural job as tmux — several terminals under one screen, with sessions you leave running — with discoverable controls on screen rather than a cheatsheet.

Zellij runs on Linux, macOS and Windows and is free and open source. The maintainers also run a paid hosted session-sharing service, Zellij.online, currently in beta.

Best for: Developers who want multiplexer benefits without learning tmux first, and Windows users who want a multiplexer at all.

Where it falls down: Zellij has every blind spot tmux has — it knows nothing about Claude Code, shows you no approval or token state, and provides no git isolation. It is also the less common choice, so fewer agent tools target it: Claude Squad, for instance, requires tmux specifically. Zellij.online is in beta, so do not plan around hosted session sharing yet.

simple-code-gui

Does the job on paper, but the author has paused development

Desktop app Noncommercial licence Development inactive

simple-code-gui comes up in answers to this question, so it belongs here — with a warning attached. simple-code-gui is a desktop app for managing multiple AI coding sessions across different projects, with a sidebar of saved folders, instant resume of past conversations, voice input and output, image pasting and themes. On a feature list it reads like a fit.

The problem is the state of the project. simple-code-gui's own README says the project is "currently on hiatus" with "development inactive", and that it is "not in a good state of development". Stronger alternatives have emerged, which is why the developer paused it. It had 51 stars when the repository was read on 20 October 2026. The licence is PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — free for personal use, with commercial distribution requiring the author's permission, which rules it out for most paid work.

It is Electron and TypeScript on Node.js, and it builds for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux as AppImage, .deb and .rpm, plus the AUR on Arch.

Best for: Personal tinkering, or reading the source if you are building something similar. Nothing you depend on.

Where it falls down: The author says development is inactive and points you at alternatives, which is about as clear a signal as a maintainer can give. Credit to them for saying so in the README rather than letting people find out. Take the advice: use the Claude Code desktop app or ChatML instead.

Quick comparison

All eleven tools, with the facts that decide most choices. Prices are exactly as each vendor publishes them on 20 October 2026; a blank means the vendor publishes no figure.

#	Tool	Organises around	Platforms	Price as published	Worktree isolation
1	Claude Code desktop app	Sessions	macOS, Windows, Linux (beta)	Included with Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise	Yes
2	Crystl	Projects (gems) and sessions (shards)	macOS only	$0/forever; guild $170/year	Yes
3	VS Code Agents window	Sessions, per workspace	macOS, Windows, Linux	Editor free; needs a paid Claude plan	Yes, where available
4	Claude Squad	Workspaces, one per agent	Cross-platform (needs tmux, gh)	Free, AGPL-3.0	Yes
5	ccmanager	Worktrees and projects	Cross-platform (npm, no tmux)	Free, MIT	Yes, managed in-app
6	ChatML	Sessions and features	macOS 13+, Windows 10+, Linux x64	No price published; GPL-3.0	Yes
7	JetBrains Air	Projects, each with sessions	JetBrains IDEs, web, CLI	Credits at public API rates; no figure published	Not stated
8	Nimbalyst	A wiki, plus a visual workspace	macOS, Windows, Linux	App $0; Wiki Teams $20/user/mo or $200/user/yr	Not stated
9	tmux	Terminal sessions and windows	Linux, macOS, BSDs, Solaris	Free, ISC	No — pair with `--worktree`
10	Zellij	Terminal sessions and panes	macOS, Windows, Linux	Free and open source	No — pair with `--worktree`
11	simple-code-gui	Sessions and saved folders	Windows, macOS, Linux	Free personal use; PolyForm Noncommercial	Not stated

How to choose

Five questions settle it for most people. Work down the list and stop at the first one that is a yes.

Have you tried the Claude Code desktop app? If not, start there. It is included with the plan you already pay for, it runs parallel sessions from a sidebar, and it runs on all three platforms. Everything below is for a specific reason the first-party app did not cover.
Are you on Windows or Linux? Then use the Claude Code desktop app, the VS Code Agents window, ChatML or Claude Squad. Crystl is not available to you.
Is the problem reviewing output rather than starting sessions? ChatML, for the diff viewer and the per-session budget caps.
Do you keep four or more repositories open at once? Crystl on macOS, or JetBrains Air if you are already a JetBrains shop and can get into the rollout. Both put projects at the top level instead of sessions.
Do you work on a remote machine, or want no vendor in the loop? tmux, or Claude Squad if you want a UI on top of tmux. ccmanager if you want that UI without installing tmux at all.

One more thing, whichever tool you pick. Three to five parallel sessions is the practical ceiling for most people, and the constraint is review rather than compute. Past five, you spend more time reading diffs than you saved writing code. No app on this list fixes that. Any app that implies otherwise is selling you something.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a desktop app for managing multiple Claude Code sessions in different projects?

Yes. The Claude Code desktop app from Anthropic runs several sessions in parallel from a sidebar, and each session has its own chat history and project folder. Third-party apps that do the same job include Crystl, ChatML, Claude Squad, Nimbalyst and JetBrains Air.

Can the Claude Code desktop app open more than one project at a time?

Yes, indirectly. Each session in the Claude Code desktop app carries its own project folder, so two sessions can sit in two different repositories and run side by side. What the Claude Code desktop app does not offer is a persistent per-project workspace. Crystl and JetBrains Air are built around that instead.

Do I need an app at all to run parallel Claude Code sessions?

No. Run claude --worktree feature-auth in one terminal and claude --worktree fix-login in another, and each Claude Code session gets its own git worktree and branch. An app is worth it when you want one screen showing every session's state instead of a row of terminal tabs.

Why do parallel Claude Code sessions need git worktrees?

Two agents editing the same working directory overwrite each other. A git worktree gives each session its own directory and branch while sharing one .git database, so the sessions run in parallel and you merge the branches afterwards.

Which of these tools support agents other than Claude Code?

Most do. Claude Squad manages Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Aider, OpenCode and Amp. Crystl runs Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, Kimi Code, opencode, aider, goose and Ollama. JetBrains Air works with Claude Agent, Codex, Junie, Copilot, OpenCode and ACP agents. Nimbalyst works with Claude Code, Codex, Cowork, Cursor, VS Code and any MCP agent.

Can I switch between two Claude accounts in one app?

Not natively today. Issue #18435 on the Claude Code repository is an open feature request for multi-account profile switching in Claude Desktop. It had 926 thumbs-up and 209 comments on 20 October 2026, and no Anthropic maintainer has commented on it. For the CLI, CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is the documented way to keep separate config and session storage per account.

The short version

The answer is yes, and the first-party Claude Code desktop app is the honest default. Free with your plan, on every platform, parallel sessions in a sidebar. Ten other tools are worth knowing. Each one is better than the rest at one specific thing. ChatML at review. Claude Squad and ccmanager at open-source multi-agent work. Crystl and JetBrains Air at many projects at once. tmux at surviving a dropped SSH connection.

None of them removes the real ceiling, which is how many diffs you can read in an afternoon. Pick the one that matches whatever is actually slowing you down. Ignore the rest until it isn't.

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Desktop Apps and GUIs for Managing Multiple Claude Code Sessions