[BUG] Previous sessions not showing in desktop app sidebar

[aarontrustframe]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Description
All previous Claude Code sessions disappeared from the sidebar in the desktop app (Claude for Mac). Sessions were visible ~8 hours ago but are now gone. Only the current session appears.

The session files still exist on disk:

~/.claude/projects/-Users-*****************
├── *******-...jsonl (Feb 8)
├── *******-...jsonl (Feb 9-10, ~36 MB)
├── ******-...jsonl (Feb 10-12, ~54 MB)
└── ********-...jsonl (Feb 13, current)

What Should Happen?

Previous sessions should appear in the sidebar and be resumable

Error Messages/Logs

no error messages

Steps to Reproduce

Open Claude desktop app
Navigate to a project with prior sessions
Check sidebar — only current session is listed

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

1.1.2998.

Claude Code Version

command not found: claude

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

App restart did/didn't fix it (update after you try)
No .jsonl files were deleted — this appears to be a UI/indexing issue

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. [BUG] Desktop app "Local" sessions filter doesn't show CLI sessions #22723
2. Mac App fails to remember session history. #22608
3. [BUG] Conversation History disappeared after update. #12908

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

• If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
• To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically closed as a duplicate of #22723.

If this is incorrect, please re-open this issue or create a new one.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Infrabass]

Same issue for me.
And this is not a duplicate of the associated issue!

[Dannywb1996]

i asked claude itself to fix it lmao

i was something about the folder where the history are supposed to be saved doesnt exist, claude created it and it was fixed....

i delete the session so i dont remember where it was...

[Infrabass]

Thanks so much for getting back to me: problem fixed with your direction and Claude's help!

"What's missing is the Desktop's session registry (claude-code-sessions), which only has today's entry. The Desktop uses this registry to show sessions in its sidebar."

[ehawkin]

Can you provide a bit more detail on how this issue was solved? I'm having difficulty getting Claude to identify and fix the issue.

[Dannywb1996]

Here's what was wrong and what I fixed:\n\nRoot cause: The Claude Desktop App expects sessions to be stored at:\n\n%APPDATA%\\Claude\\claude-code-sessions\\<accountId>\\<orgId>\\\n\nThat directory never existed on your system. Every time the app started, it failed with ENOENT and fell back to "No persisted sessions found" — so your session list was always empty after restart.\n\nFix: Created the missing directory:\n\nC:\\Users\\xxxxx\\AppData\\Roaming\\Claude\\claude-code-sessions\\a81c5d06-...\\56f89c12-...\\\n\n\nWrite permissions verified OK. Restart the Claude app and your sessions should now persist across restarts. New sessions will be saved to this directory, and the loadSessions error should stop appearing in the logs."

this whats claude says