Desktop app: No way to remove entries from the "Recent" folders list

[WT-YangShangyue]

Environment

• Claude for Windows 1.15962.1 (1e236d)
• OS: Windows 11 Pro 22631

Summary

The project picker chip in the task composer shows a "Recent" folders list, but there is no UI to remove individual entries from it. Old or abandoned project folders accumulate with no way to clean them up.

Repro

1. Open a folder via the project chip (e.g. via_unet).
2. Click the chip again -> see via_unet listed under "Recent".
3. Try to remove it:
   • Left-click the entry -> only switches to the folder.
   • Right-click the entry -> only the default Electron context menu (Copy / Select All); no Remove / Forget option.
   • File menu has no related entry.
   • Settings (General / Account / Usage / Capabilities / Connectors / Claude Code / Cowork / Desktop app -> General/Extensions/Developer) has no project list management.
4. Conclusion: there is no in-app way to remove a Recent entry.

Expected

Either a "Remove from Recent" action in the right-click menu of each entry, or a section in Settings to manage the Recent folders list.

Workarounds attempted

• Editing %APPDATA%\Claude\config.json - no recent-projects key present.
• Searching all non-session files under %APPDATA%\Claude\ for the folder name - no plain-text match.
• The list appears to be stored in IndexedDB (%APPDATA%\Claude\IndexedDB\https_claude.ai_0.indexeddb.leveldb\), which is binary and locked while the app is running. Deleting it would wipe other local state, so it isn't a real workaround.

[lelborn]

Hitting this too. My "Recent" list in the project picker has accumulated stale folders (old/renamed local paths) with no way to remove individual entries. Right-clicking only shows the default context menu (Copy/Select All), with no "Remove from Recent" option.

I'm on Mac OS btw. :)

[geokao]

+1 — same on macOS. My Recent folders list had grown to 20 entries with no way to remove any of them, so the picker keeps getting longer and less useful. A right-click → "Remove from recents" (or even a cap on the list length) would be great.

[NicolasEymael]

In addition to being able to remove folders, the ideal solution would also include an option to mark folders as favorites (pin them), so frequently used projects stay at the top regardless of recency.

[katzeye777]

Adding a concrete harm case: my Recent list has two entries with the same display name — cmw-central /Users/matthewkatz/Claude (correct) and cmw-central /Users/matthewkatz/Calude (a typo of "Claude", from once opening the repo via a mistyped path). They sit right next to each other, look identical at a glance, and there's no way to delete the bad one — so it's not just clutter, it's a footgun: one wrong click lands me in the wrong (nonexistent) path instead of my real repo.

Worth flagging for whoever picks this up: the older ~/.claude.json workaround (#68350) no longer works. I removed the path's key from projects in ~/.claude.json and cleared the app's Local Storage, and the entry still came back on restart — so the list is persisted somewhere else (looks like the detectedProjects store mentioned in #75230), independent of both.

Ask: a per-entry "Remove from recent" (right-click), and ideally auto-pruning of entries whose paths don't exist on disk — the typo/dead-path ones are pure hazard.

[lex1182]

I was able to remove those "recent" folders in Claude Code. I did a combination of the following below. You may try any of the following at your own risk:

1. Close Claude Code -> Delete any chat sessions that had that working directory included -> Reopen Claude and see if that recent folder is gone (BE WARNED: This is permanent)
2. Close Claude Code -> Rename ~/.claude.json to ~/.claude.json__BCK (if there's another claude.json.backup file, deleted it too) -> Reopen Claude and see if all recent folders are gone, or rename back to normal
3. Close Claude Code -> Rename ~/.claude/history.jsonl to ~/.claude/history.jsonl __BCK -> Reopen Claude and see if all recent folders are gone, or else rename back to normal
4. Close Claude Code -> Zip and Backup everything in ~/.claude/sessions -> Reopen Claude and see if all recent folders are gone, or else restore
5. Close Claude Code -> Zip and Backup everything in %TEMP%\claude -> Reopen Claude and see if all recent folders are gone, or else restore

I didn't do them in this order. I did 2 to 5 first and reopened Claude. And then went with no1 last (because the chat sessions weren't loading up properly after all this deleting). No1 as last step fixed it for me. Maybe someone else can test and confirm the combination required. But my guess is that these folders can't be removed if there's chat sessions attached to them (which makes sense)

[vasiltabakov]

Still broken in 1.24012.9 on Windows. The sidebar shows every folder that ever had a session, including one-off folders I'll never open again. Editing ~/.claude.json no longer works - the sidebar is built from the app's internal session store, which users can't reasonably edit. Please restore the show/hide project toggles that used to exist.

[main-sounds-audio]

Same on macOS, with a wrinkle I haven't seen mentioned: agent worktrees.

My Recent list had 22 entries. Only 8 were folders I'd ever chosen. The rest
were .claude/worktrees/<name> directories created automatically for
background agent sessions, showing up under names like apply-ygam and
register-ref-identity that I never opened and can't meaningfully "work in".
On a machine that uses background agents this fills the list faster than
ordinary folder churn — I had 42 worktrees across 4 repos.

Where the list actually comes from

The opening comment guesses IndexedDB after searching "all non-session files"
under the app data directory. That search excluded the answer.

The Recent list is derived, not stored. It's one row per distinct cwd
across the session records in:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions/<workspace>/<id>/local_<session>.json

Each record has cwd and originCwd. The 22 rows in my picker matched the
distinct cwd values across my 136 records exactly.

Things I checked that are not the source, in case it saves anyone time:

• ~/.claude.json → projects. Pruned it 57 → 9, no change on screen.
• git-worktrees.json → worktrees and untrackedDirGc.cwds. Also pruned,
  also no change.

Consequences worth noting

• Archiving doesn't help. Archived sessions still contribute their cwd.
  Most of my junk rows were already archived.
• Deleting the worktree doesn't help. The row comes from the record, so
  removing the directory leaves the row pointing at a path that no longer
  exists.
• There's no user-facing lever at all, which is what makes this different
  from a missing convenience. The only way to drop a row today is to delete
  session records by hand, which also removes those conversations from the
  session list.

Suggestions, in order of how much they'd help

1. Exclude cwds under .claude/worktrees/ when deriving the list. An agent's
   scratch worktree isn't a folder the user chose, and this alone would have
   removed 13 of my 22 rows.
2. Skip archived sessions, or fall back to them only when there's nothing else
   to show. Archiving is already the gesture for "I'm done with this."
3. Then the right-click → Remove from Recent that this issue asks for, for
   whatever's left.

1 and 2 need no new UI and would fix the common case on their own.