Windows Desktop: API-login threads disappear from sidebar after restart, but still exist locally

Open 💬 2 comments Opened Apr 24, 2026 by 970196899

💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

Version

Codex Desktop on Windows (MSIX / Microsoft Store)

App package version:

26.422.2437.0

Thread/session metadata also shows:

cli_version: 0.124.0-alpha.2

Bug

When using API login in Codex Desktop on Windows, conversation threads disappear from the left sidebar after restarting the app.

This does not appear to be actual data loss.

Expected behavior

API-login conversations should remain visible in the left sidebar after restart, similar to account / ChatGPT login.

Actual behavior

After restarting Codex Desktop:

API-login threads disappear from the left sidebar
pinned or currently opened threads can still display normally
account / ChatGPT login history behaves normally

What I verified

The threads still exist locally:

C:\Users\Administrator\.codex\sessions\...
C:\Users\Administrator\.codex\session_index.jsonl
C:\Users\Administrator\.codex\state_5.sqlite

I confirmed that affected threads still have:

rollout/session files on disk
index entries in session_index.jsonl
rows in state_5.sqlite with archived = 0

So this looks like a sidebar thread-list restoration / visibility issue, not conversation deletion.

Repro steps

Open Codex Desktop on Windows
Sign in with API login
Start one or more conversations
Close Codex Desktop completely
Reopen Codex Desktop
Observe that the API-login threads are missing from the left sidebar

Notes

I also tried clearing app-local package data under:

C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Packages\OpenAI.Codex_2p2nqsd0c76g0

That did not fix the issue.

Example affected thread id:

019dbec3-6c63-7ac0-878f-9ed85eb5bcf5

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 4 months ago

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

#17540
#19290
#19088
#17970

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Wangnov · 3 months ago

If the missing threads still exist in state_5.sqlite / rollout JSONL files, one thing worth checking is whether the local history is split across different model_provider buckets.

I maintain an unofficial helper for that specific case: https://github.com/Wangnov/codex-threadripper

Start with the read-only diagnostic first:

codex-threadripper status

If it shows threads split across providers, codex-threadripper sync can reconcile the local metadata so Codex Desktop / codex resume / app-server clients see the same history again. It writes backups before changing local state, but I would still back up ~/.codex first.

Caveat: this only targets provider-bucket visibility drift. If the root cause is sidebar cache/state, workspace path normalization, or encrypted-content ownership across accounts, it may not fix the underlying issue.