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Codex Issues / #17970

Threads keep disappearing from the sidebar even with "All chats" selected

Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Apr 15, 2026 by abagherpour Closed Apr 15, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

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

Codex app 26.409.20454 (1462)

What subscription do you have?

Pro

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.3.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

Threads keep disappearing from the sidebar even though:

  • Show -> All chats is selected
  • I am sure I did not archive those threads

The project still appears in the sidebar, but it suddenly shows No chats even though that project previously had multiple threads.

Expected behavior

If All chats is selected, existing threads should remain visible in the sidebar unless I explicitly archive them.

Actual behavior

A project that previously had threads starts showing No chats, and those threads no longer appear in the sidebar.

What I tried

I already checked the obvious sidebar options:

  • Show -> All chats
  • Organize -> By project
  • Organize -> Chronological list

Those settings do not bring the missing threads back.

Additional notes

This looks like a sidebar/indexing issue rather than intentional filtering.

I also checked locally and found that the underlying thread/session data still appears to exist, which makes this look like a UI/state bug rather than actual deletion.

I can provide

  • redacted screenshots
  • sanitized local diagnostics showing the threads still exist on disk / in the local index

What steps can reproduce the bug?

I do not have a small repro yet, but this is the pattern I keep seeing:

  1. Use Codex desktop across multiple local projects
  2. Accumulate multiple threads in a project
  3. Later open the sidebar again
  4. The project is still listed, but now shows No chats
  5. All chats is already selected, and I did not archive those threads

What is the expected behavior?

If All chats is selected, existing threads should remain visible in the sidebar unless I explicitly archive them.

Additional information

_No response_

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 4 months ago

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

  • #17540
  • #17317
  • #16901
  • #16817
  • #16545

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varun-nominal · 4 months ago

big +1

abagherpour · 4 months ago

This appears to be the same bug as https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/15060 and very closely related to https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/14751

temporary workaround/patch made by codex:
----
I also tested a local desktop-app workaround and it supports the recent-conversations pagination diagnosis.

What I changed locally:

  • patched the desktop renderer bundle to increase recent thread page size from 50 to 100
  • added auto-pagination during recent-conversation refresh until either nextCursor is exhausted or 500 threads are loaded
  • fixed the app bundle’s Electron ASAR integrity metadata so the patched app would launch

Result:

  • this matches the stopgap described in #15368 and is consistent with the behavior I observed locally: the missing thread still exists in state_5.sqlite, direct paginated thread/list can still return it, and creating new chats only makes the project visible again by pushing it back into the recent window

Important:

  • this is only a workaround
  • it does NOT implement the cleaner fix of loading project children from paginated thread/list scoped by cwd in By project mode

So my current view is:

  • root cause is still sidebar recent-conversations hydration/pagination
  • a cap bump / auto-pagination works as a temporary client-side mitigation
  • the cleaner fix is to stop using the global recent slice as the source of truth for project contents in By project mode

Related issue:
https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/15368

dynamic7777 · 4 months ago

I just hit this myself, and it's kind of weird because it came around an update, but I had just made a bunch of new threads for some specific projects. I came back to see that a bunch of older threads were deleted, but it didn't go through and delete or make disappear my oldest threads. It doesn't seem to be a current, chronological issue, but a huge portion, I would say, 30 threads disappeared, and some really important ones with a lot of context about some specific projects. They are there, locally still. I'm trying to recover them through another agent, but this is not working so far. It's seeming to be some type of a rendering issue. I'm hoping OpenAI pulls the head out of the hard drive and figures this out really quickly because this is extremely important.

I am on the codex mac most recent update Version 26.415.20818 (1727)