Codex Desktop: sidebar conversation order changes after switching tasks and resets after toggling Activity

[zenvor]

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.727.51351 (build 6119)

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT subscription (exact tier not displayed in the app)

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm; macOS 26.5.2 (25F84)

What issue are you seeing?

Summary

A newly created conversation initially appears at the top of its project, but after switching to other tasks and returning, the conversation is displayed lower in the sidebar (third position in this reproduction) even though it remains the active/recent task.

Opening the View activity panel from the bell icon and then closing it immediately causes the same conversation to jump back to the first position.

Screenshot 1 — Incorrect order after switching tasks

Actual behavior

• The conversation's sidebar position changes unexpectedly after navigating between tasks.
• The visible ordering becomes stale or inconsistent with recent activity.
• Toggling the Activity panel forces the expected order to reappear.
• No conversation data is lost, but active work becomes harder to locate.

This suggests that opening/closing the Activity panel triggers a sidebar refresh or cache invalidation that normal task navigation does not.

Screenshot 2 — View activity trigger

Screenshot 3 — Correct order after closing Activity

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open the Codex desktop app and use the default project-grouped sidebar ordering.
2. Create a new conversation inside an existing project.
3. Confirm that the new conversation appears first within that project.
4. Switch to one or more other conversations to check their progress.
5. Return to the original project/conversation.
6. Observe that the newly created/recent conversation is now shown lower in the project list (third in this reproduction).
7. Click the bell icon (View activity) to open the Activity panel.
8. Click the bell icon again to close the Activity panel.
9. Observe that the conversation immediately moves back to the first position.

What is the expected behavior?

Conversation ordering should remain stable and consistently reflect the app's intended recency/activity sort.

If the conversation is considered the most recent/active item, it should remain first after switching between tasks. Opening or closing the Activity panel should not change the ordering unless the underlying activity data actually changes.

Additional information

Environment

• App: ChatGPT desktop with Codex
• Version: 26.727.51351 (build 6119)
• Platform: macOS 26.5.2 (25F84)
• uname -mprs: Darwin 25.5.0 arm64 arm
• Window setup: single window
• Conversation type: local Codex task
• Sidebar ordering: default project-grouped ordering

The screenshots are cropped to the sidebar to remove unrelated project content.

Related issues

This appears related to, but is not an exact duplicate of:

• [app] Activity view keeps stale ordering after chats receive new activity #36300 (Activity view itself keeps stale ordering until toggled)
• Codex Desktop: active thread appears at bottom despite newest recency after pin/unpin #35090 (ordering becomes stale after pin/unpin)
• Conversation thread jumps back into middle of sidebar when invoked from another thread #36634 (thread moves into the middle after cross-thread invocation)

The distinguishing trigger here is that toggling the Activity panel immediately repairs the visible order.

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• [app] Activity view keeps stale ordering after chats receive new activity #36300
• Conversation thread jumps back into middle of sidebar when invoked from another thread #36634

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[zenvor]

After reviewing the suggested issues more carefully, this appears to be another reproduction path for #36300. In both cases, the sidebar keeps stale activity/recency ordering, and toggling Activity rebuilds the list and immediately restores the expected order. Our reproduction first observes the stale order in the normal project-grouped sidebar after switching tasks, but the core behavior and workaround are the same. Closing as a duplicate of #36300.