[BUG] Remote Control renames from the mobile app don't persist to the local CLI session (claude.ai web works)

[rcpooley]

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?

When a Remote Control session is renamed from the Claude mobile app (the app's rename UI), the new title is not persisted to the local CLI session transcript. As a result, anything on the host that reads the session title from the transcript never sees the rename.

Renaming the same session from claude.ai/code (desktop web) works correctly — it writes a custom-title entry to the local transcript on the next bridge sync.

This looks like the mobile-app counterpart to the fix shipped in v2.1.110 ("Fixed Remote Control session renames from claude.ai not persisting the title to the local CLI session", referenced in #48868). That fix appears to cover claude.ai web but not the mobile app.

Concretely, in the session's transcript JSONL (~/.claude/projects/<cwd-slug>/<uuid>.jsonl):

• Each bridge sync writes a {"type":"bridge-session",...} line followed by {"type":"ai-title","aiTitle":"..."}.
• After a desktop web rename, the next bridge also writes {"type":"custom-title","customTitle":"<new name>"}. ✅
• After a mobile app rename, no new custom-title is written; the bridge re-stamps the previous (web-set) custom title, or none at all. ❌

The rename is stored cloud-side — it shows correctly in both the mobile app and claude.ai/code session lists, and is visible across devices. It simply never reaches the local transcript when initiated from mobile.

Related: /rename typed from the mobile app over Remote Control is also ineffective — it is delivered to the running session as a plain prompt rather than executed as a CLI slash command, so it writes no custom-title either.

What Should Happen?

A Remote Control session rename performed from the mobile app should persist to the local CLI session the same way a claude.ai/code (desktop web) rename does — i.e. a custom-title entry is written to the local transcript on the next bridge sync — so host-side tooling and the local CLI title stay in sync with the cloud title.

Error Messages/Logs

# After mobile rename — no custom-title written; bridges keep writing ai-title:
$ grep -c '"type":"custom-title"' <uuid>.jsonl
0
$ grep -c '"type":"ai-title"'     <uuid>.jsonl
9

# After desktop-web rename "Fix remote claude UI (updated)" — custom-title appears
# on the next bridge:
{"type":"bridge-session","sessionId":"<uuid>","bridgeSessionId":"cse_...","lastSequenceNum":0}
{"type":"custom-title","customTitle":"Fix remote claude UI (updated)","sessionId":"<uuid>"}
{"type":"ai-title","aiTitle":"...","sessionId":"<uuid>"}

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enable Remote Control (e.g. "Enable Remote Control for all sessions" in /config, or launch with --remote-control).
2. Start a session on a host and connect to it from the Claude mobile app.
3. From the mobile app, rename the session (the app's rename UI) to mobile-name.
4. Send any message so a bridge sync occurs.
5. On the host, inspect the transcript:
   grep '"type":"custom-title"' ~/.claude/projects/<cwd-slug>/<uuid>.jsonl
   → no entry for mobile-name. ❌
6. Now rename the same session from claude.ai/code (desktop web) to web-name, send a message, and re-check:
   → a {"type":"custom-title","customTitle":"web-name"} entry appears. ✅

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

2.1.168

Platform

Other

Operating System

Ubuntu/Debian Linux

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

• Reproduces 100% of the time on the affected setup.
• <uuid>, <cwd-slug>, and the bridge id are redacted placeholders; the real
  transcript shows the literal custom-title values from the rename.
• Discovered because a host-side tool that derives the session title by reading
  custom-title from the transcript could see desktop-web renames but never
  mobile-app renames — so the impact is real for anything consuming the title
  locally, not just cosmetic.
• Possibly related (different direction): [BUG] Remote Control registration ignores persisted /rename title after /resume #59960 — there the CLI holds the
  renamed title but the Remote Control display falls back to the auto name;
  here the cloud holds the title but it never reaches the local transcript.

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. Session title diverges between Desktop app and mobile/web — two independent title stores that never reconcile #64304
2. Remote Control: hook-set sessionTitle never syncs to the RC session name (web/iOS keep hostname auto-names); /rename does sync — per-channel matrix #67707
3. Session titles are not synced consistently across devices (iPhone vs PC) #68372

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

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[rcpooley]

Thanks @github-actions — I went through all three. They're closely related (same Remote Control title-sync problem space), but I don't think this is a duplicate of any of them. The distinction is surface + direction + storage layer.
This issue is specifically about the on-disk CLI transcript (~/.claude/projects/.../<id>.jsonl) for a headless claude --remote-control session: a desktop-web rename writes a custom-title entry to it; a mobile-app rename does not. None of the three covers that path:

• Session title diverges between Desktop app and mobile/web — two independent title stores that never reconcile #64304 — Windows Desktop app, divergence between its two internal stores (native Code-tab JSON + cloud-bridge IndexedDB). It states the CLI transcript has no title field at all — which holds for desktop-app sessions but not for --remote-control CLI sessions, where the bridge demonstrably writes custom-title on a web rename. So this is a counterexample to that claim, on a different surface.
• Remote Control: hook-set sessionTitle never syncs to the RC session name (web/iOS keep hostname auto-names); /rename does sync — per-channel matrix #67707 — the CLI→web/iOS direction (hook-set sessionTitle doesn't sync outward; /rename does). This is the mirror image: mine is cloud→CLI-transcript, and about the mobile app's rename specifically, not hooks.
• Session titles are not synced consistently across devices (iPhone vs PC) #68372 — symptom-level cross-device display divergence (iPhone vs PC desktop), with no transcript/custom-title mechanism. (The bot flagged Session title diverges between Desktop app and mobile/web — two independent title stores that never reconcile #64304 as its duplicate.)

I suspect these share an underlying root cause: no single shared title store, with titles living in several per-surface stores and a bridge sync that's partial and direction-/client-dependent. Each issue looks like a different missing edge in that sync graph. Happy for the team to track them under one umbrella — but this facet (mobile rename → CLI transcript) is independently reproducible and separately testable, so I'd keep it open and linked rather than auto-closed.
Repro and on-disk evidence are in the issue body above.