Ability to delete or clear Codex Web conversation history, especially when it syncs into Codex App

Open 💬 6 comments Opened Apr 30, 2026 by squarepots

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

What issue are you seeing?

I would like to request a way to delete, clear, or permanently remove Codex Web conversation history from my account.

Right now, conversations created in Codex Web appear to persist and also show up in Codex App. This makes the old web conversations feel difficult to get rid of, even when I no longer want them to appear in my Codex workspace.

This is not only a UI preference. It is also a user data control and privacy concern. Users should have a clear way to remove old Codex conversations, especially when those conversations contain development context, prompts, file paths, project details, or other sensitive information.

At the moment, I cannot find an obvious way to delete Codex Web chats or prevent old Codex Web history from following me into Codex App.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Use Codex Web and create one or more conversations.
Later open Codex App using the same account.
Notice that previous Codex Web conversations/history are still present or surfaced in Codex App.
Try to remove or permanently delete those old conversations.
There does not appear to be a clear delete/clear/remove option for this history.

What is the expected behavior?

Users should be able to:

Delete individual Codex conversations.
Clear all Codex Web conversation history.
Remove old Codex Web conversations from Codex App.
Ideally choose whether Codex Web conversations sync into Codex App at all.
Confirm that deleted conversations are no longer shown in the UI.

A simple “Delete conversation” and “Clear Codex history” option would already solve most of the problem.

Additional information

This is important because Codex conversations often contain project-specific development context, local paths, prompts, implementation details, repository information, and other potentially sensitive material.
Even if the history is useful by default, users should still have control over whether old conversations remain visible across Codex surfaces.
Please consider adding account-level conversation management for Codex Web and Codex App.

View original on GitHub ↗

6 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 2 months ago

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

#20251
#20434

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DrWaKu · 2 months ago

+1, hitting the same on Codex Desktop for macOS, Version 26.429.20946 (2312).

Confirming the current state from the desktop UI:

Individual chats: archive only, no delete
Projects: can be removed (good)
Repos/sessions tied to a project: come back as soon as the same folder is reconnected, even after archiving

Workaround I'm using is wiping local state while keeping login:

rm -rf ~/.codex/sessions ~/.codex/archived_sessions ~/.codex/shell_snapshots ~/.codex/memories
rm -f  ~/.codex/session_index.jsonl ~/.codex/logs_*.sqlite* ~/.codex/state_*.sqlite* ~/.codex/.codex-global-state.json

Keeps auth.json and config.toml so no re-login. Works, but it's a hammer — a per-chat delete and a "forget this repo's history" action in the UI would remove the need entirely.

aztack · 2 months ago

I use following bash function to delete specific session with it's ID copied from Codex Desktop:

function rmss () {
        rm $(ls ~/.codex/sessions/**/*.jsonl |grep $1)
}

rmss 019debda-1191-7fe1-aafb-94d2253306a3 # Session ID

DrWaKu · 2 months ago

❤️ thanks aztack, much appreciated, exactly what I needed. 🙏

LeeeeTX · 2 months ago

We built a small open-source macOS tool for managing local Codex App/CLI conversation history:

https://github.com/LeeeeTX/codex-history-cleaner

It provides a terminal UI to list, search, preview, and delete local Codex sessions from ~/.codex. Deletion is recoverable by default with backups, and permanent deletion is also available with an extra confirmation step.

Hope this is useful for anyone who wants local controls for Codex history cleanup.

Steelie44 · 2 months ago

Here is a python script to delete all sessions in codex:
You could tweak this script, if your path is different just change base_path variable.

Replace YOUR_NAME with your actual Windows username

To use: Open power shell, cd to your files root, run: python -m codex_delete.py

codex_delete.py