Claude’s New Design: A Complete Overview of the Redesigned Interface

“Claude Design” means two different things in 2026, and they’re easy to mix up. There’s the new Claude Design product — a visual-creation tool launched in April for building prototypes, slides, and one-pagers. And there’s the broader interface redesign — the consumer Claude.ai navigation overhaul, the unified Directory, the redesigned Claude Code desktop app. Both shipped in March and April 2026. Both are real. Neither is the other.

This overview covers both — what changed in the interface, what’s new on the surface, and what to know about the Claude Design product as a separate offering. Everything below is from Anthropic’s own blog and support documentation.

The Three Rollouts That Made the New Claude

Anthropic didn’t ship a single “we redesigned Claude” announcement. Instead, three separate rollouts in March and April 2026 effectively converged into what users now experience as the new Claude:

• March 31, 2026 — Unified Directory launch. Skills, Connectors, and Plugins consolidated into a single browse-and-install surface, accessed via a new Customize sidebar.
• April 14, 2026 — Claude Code desktop redesign. New session sidebar, drag-and-drop layout for terminal/preview/diff/chat panes, integrated file editor, Side Chat panel for branching.
• April 17, 2026 — Claude Design (Anthropic Labs). A separate product at claude.ai/design for visual creation work.

Together they constitute the redesign. Everything else here is the breakdown.

The Customize Sidebar and Unified Directory

The single biggest visible change for typical users is the new Customize section in the left sidebar of claude.ai and Claude Desktop. Per Anthropic’s announcement:

“Our unified directory brings skills, connectors, and plugins together in one place so you can find and install everything that customizes Claude without switching between separate menus.”

The flow: click Customize in the left sidebar, then click the tab you want — Skills, Connectors, or Plugins — then click the + button to browse the Directory. The Directory itself lives at claude.ai/directory. On Team and Enterprise plans, there’s an additional “Your organization” tab for org-shared skills.

Three actions work in the Directory: Install for Skills and Plugins, and Connect for Connectors. Installed Skills are view-only — you can use them but can’t edit their contents. Skills shared by your organization can only be removed by the original sharer or an org owner.

If you want a deeper breakdown of what each of those three things does and when to use which, our Skills vs Connectors vs Plugins guide walks through the conceptual differences. The redesign doesn’t change those concepts — it just gives them a single front door.

What Moved, What’s Gone, What’s New in the Sidebar

• Skills moved from Settings → Capabilities → Skills (the Oct 2025 location) to the Customize sidebar. The old path still works for the underlying capability toggle (Code execution and file creation), but Skill management has a real home now.
• Connectors got a dedicated tab. Per-user OAuth still happens here; org-level enable still happens in admin settings.
• Plugins are visible in the consumer interface for the first time. Previously they were a Claude Code marketplace concept; now they surface in claude.ai/directory too.
• Cowork picked up scheduled tasks and a plugin marketplace (February 2026) and admin controls — sitting alongside the new Customize sidebar rather than replacing it.
• Settings → Appearance consolidates light/dark mode, font choice (including Dyslexic Friendly), and a sidebar collapse toggle in one place. Source: Anthropic appearance settings doc.

If you’ve been using Claude since 2025 and feel like things moved, you’re right — they did. The structure is cleaner; the path to install something is shorter; the chrome itself is more cohesive.

The Visual Style

Anthropic’s design system documentation describes Claude’s house style explicitly: “warm cream/off-white backgrounds (~`#F4F1EA`), serif display type (Georgia, Fraunces, Playfair), italic word-accents, and a terracotta/amber accent.” It’s the same aesthetic that surfaces in claude.ai’s chrome and in Claude’s default outputs when you ask it to design something.

Anthropic notes the style “reads well for editorial, hospitality, and portfolio briefs, but will feel off for dashboards, dev tools, fintech, healthcare, or enterprise apps.” That’s worth knowing if you’re building UI prompts inside Claude — your output will lean toward this aesthetic by default unless you explicitly steer it elsewhere.

The Redesigned Claude Code Desktop App

For developers and power users who run Claude Code, April 14 brought a substantial desktop-app redesign. Per Anthropic’s redesign post:

“You’re not typing one prompt and waiting. You’re kicking off a refactor in one repo, a bug fix in another, and a test-writing pass in a third. The new app is built for how agentic coding actually feels now: many things in flight, and you in the orchestrator seat.”

What changed:

• New session sidebar — every active and recent session visible in one place, with filters by status, project, or environment.
• Drag-and-drop layout — terminal, preview, diff viewer, and chat panes can be rearranged.
• Integrated terminal and file editor — fewer context switches between Claude Code and your IDE.
• Side Chat via ⌘+; (Windows: Ctrl+;) — branch a side conversation without losing your main thread.
• Enhanced diff viewer — better at large changesets.
• Preview pane handles HTML and PDFs alongside local app servers.
• Web parity at claude.ai/code rolled out in late April.
• VS Code and JetBrains extensions; Slack integration.

If you use Claude Code seriously, our Claude Code beginner’s guide covers the broader workflow; the redesign mostly makes the existing capabilities easier to find and easier to run in parallel.

Claude Design (the Labs Product) — Separate From the Redesign

This is the part that confuses people. Claude Design, launched April 17, 2026, is a new product from Anthropic Labs — not a UI redesign. It lives at claude.ai/design, and it’s a visual-creation surface for prototypes, slides, one-pagers, and similar work. Think of it as the canvas equivalent of how Artifacts handle code.

Claude Design launched the same day as Claude Opus 4.7, which is the model that powers it. Anthropic’s framing positions it as a separate creative surface for users whose work is more visual than textual — the kind of person who might otherwise reach for Canva or Figma for quick comps and slides.

For presentation work specifically, our guide to building presentations with Claude walks through how Claude Design fits alongside the PowerPoint Skill, the Office add-in, and the Cowork connector — they’re not redundant; they overlap on a Venn diagram and the right one depends on what you’re producing.

Accessibility and Customization

Per Anthropic’s appearance settings, the redesigned Settings → Appearance panel exposes:

• Color mode: Light, Match System, or Dark
• Chat font: Default, Match System, or Dyslexic Friendly
• Sidebar toggle: button in the top-right of the chat surface (full sidebar removal isn’t supported)

Keyboard shortcuts beyond the Code-specific Side Chat (⌘+;) aren’t centrally documented for the consumer Claude.ai redesign — most navigation is mouse-driven. If shortcuts are critical to your workflow, the Code desktop app is where the keyboard-first interaction model lives.

Mobile and Web Parity

Per Anthropic’s Directory documentation, the unified Customize section is documented for “Claude or Claude Desktop” — i.e., web and the macOS/Windows desktop app. iOS and Android parity isn’t called out explicitly in the redesign announcements; expect a slightly older surface on mobile until Anthropic ships a parallel update.

The Code redesign launched on desktop first (April 14), with web parity at claude.ai/code following later in April. If you’ve only used Claude Code on the web, expect the desktop experience to feel measurably more polished.

What Else Bundled With the Redesign Window

A lot of product news clustered into the same March–April 2026 window:

• Excel and PowerPoint add-ins with shared context across applications (March 11, 2026).
• Cowork scheduled tasks (February 25, 2026) — Claude can run on a cron-like schedule.
• Cowork plugin marketplace + admin controls (February 24, 2026).
• Claude Opus 4.7 released alongside Claude Design (April 17, 2026).
• Claude Code terminal refresh with searchable prompt history via Ctrl+r.

Together with the sidebar/Directory reorg and the Code redesign, that’s a lot of surface change in six weeks. The good news: most of it is additive. Old workflows still work; new surfaces are mostly about making them easier to reach.

What to Do With This as a User

• Spend five minutes in Customize. Click each tab — Skills, Connectors, Plugins. You’ll discover capabilities you didn’t know existed.
• Visit claude.ai/directory. Browse what your peers have built and shared. The “Most popular” sort is a good starting filter.
• If you do design work, try claude.ai/design. It’s a new surface; the prototype-and-slide use cases are where it’s strongest.
• If you use Claude Code, update the desktop app. The redesign meaningfully changes the experience.
• Re-check Settings → Appearance. If Dyslexic Friendly font or Dark mode is something you’d benefit from, it’s there now.

The redesign is most rewarding for people who already use Claude regularly. New surfaces, better organization, and faster paths to the things that were previously buried — all of it pays back the five minutes it takes to re-orient.

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• Claude Code: Complete Beginners Guide