[$250] The Workspaces tab does not restore the last workspace after refreshing.

[m-natarajan]

If you haven’t already, check out our contributing guidelines for onboarding and email contributors@expensify.com to request to join our Slack channel!

---

Version Number: 9.3.64-21
Reproducible in staging?: Y
Reproducible in production?: N
If this was caught during regression testing, add the test name, ID and link from BrowserStack:
Email or phone of affected tester (no customers):
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @dmkt9
Slack conversation (hyperlinked to channel name): #Open source

Action Performed:

1. Open the application on desktop web.
2. Navigate to Workspaces > [Workspace name] > Categories.
3. Navigate to Home.
4. Refresh the application.
5. Navigate to Workspaces.

Expected Result:

The Categories view should remain displayed.

Actual Result:

The workspace list is displayed.

Workaround:

Unknown

Platforms:

Select the officially supported platforms where the issue was reproduced:

• Android: App
• Android: mWeb Chrome
• iOS: App
• iOS: mWeb Safari
• iOS: mWeb Chrome
• Windows: Chrome
• MacOS: Chrome / Safari

Screenshots/Videos

test.mp4

Recording.2778.mp4

View all open jobs on GitHub

Issue Owner

Current Issue Owner: @sobitneupane

Upwork Automation - Do Not Edit

• Upwork Job URL: https://www.upwork.com/jobs/~022049935326201562311
• Upwork Job ID: 2049935326201562311
• Last Price Increase: 2026-04-30

[github-actions]

👋 Friendly reminder that deploy blockers are time-sensitive ⏱ issues! Check out the open `StagingDeployCash` deploy checklist to see the list of PRs included in this release, then work quickly to do one of the following:

1. Identify the pull request that introduced this issue and revert it.
2. Find someone who can quickly fix the issue.
3. Fix the issue yourself.

[melvin-bot]

Triggered auto assignment to @puneetlath (DeployBlockerCash), see https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/expensify/questions/9980/ for more details.

[melvin-bot]

💬 A slack conversation has been started in #expensify-open-source

[MelvinBot]

Proposal

What is the root cause of that problem?

After a page refresh, the session storage fallback in useRestoreWorkspacesTabOnNavigate.ts:58-60 searches for WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR at the root level of the state tree returned by getStateFromPath. But getStateFromPath returns a state rooted at TAB_NAVIGATOR (per the linking config hierarchy), with WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR nested inside it. So the findLast call never finds WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR and returns undefined, causing the function to fall through to the workspaces list.

The flow after refresh:

1. sessionStorage correctly holds /workspaces/{policyID}/categories (saved by NavigationRoot.tsx:82-83)
2. lastVisitedPath (Onyx) was overwritten to / when the user navigated to Home, so on refresh the app restores to Home — no workspace state in the live navigation tree
3. The hook correctly falls through to the session storage path at line 58
4. getWorkspacesTabStateFromSessionStorage() calls getStateFromPath(path) which returns {routes: [{name: TAB_NAVIGATOR, state: {routes: [{name: WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR, ...}]}}]}
5. .routes?.findLast(r => r.name === WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR) searches root routes and finds only TAB_NAVIGATOR — returns undefined
6. navigateToWorkspacesPage receives no lastWorkspacesTabNavigatorRoute and falls through to navigateToWorkspacesPage.ts:67: Navigation.navigate(ROUTES.WORKSPACES_LIST.route)

The existing test mocks getWorkspacesTabStateFromSessionStorage to return WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR at the root level, which doesn't match the real getStateFromPath output — masking this bug.

What changes do you think we should make in order to solve the problem?

In useRestoreWorkspacesTabOnNavigate.ts:58-60, drill into TAB_NAVIGATOR before searching for WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR:

// Current (broken):
getWorkspacesTabStateFromSessionStorage()
    ?.routes?.findLast((route) => route.name === NAVIGATORS.WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR)
    ?.state?.routes?.findLast(...)

// Fixed:
getWorkspacesTabStateFromSessionStorage()
    ?.routes?.findLast((route) => route.name === NAVIGATORS.TAB_NAVIGATOR)
    ?.state?.routes?.findLast((route) => route.name === NAVIGATORS.WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR)
    ?.state?.routes?.findLast(...)

Update the test mock at line 285-304 to return the real getStateFromPath shape (with TAB_NAVIGATOR wrapping WORKSPACE_NAVIGATOR).

What alternative solutions did you explore? (Optional)

An alternative would be to change getWorkspacesTabStateFromSessionStorage() to return only the workspace-relevant portion of the state tree (unwrap TAB_NAVIGATOR before returning). This would keep the hook code simpler but would require changes to the utility function and any other callers.

---

Next Steps for Contributor+ team: Reply with @MelvinBot implement this to create a draft PR, @MelvinBot <your feedback> to refine this analysis, or explain why you are rejecting Melvin's proposal.

[arosiclair]

This is not so bad. Let's demote