Chat history disappeared from sidebar after app update

Open 💬 6 comments Opened Jun 3, 2026 by RogueMutant

💡 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)?

Version 26.601.21317

What subscription do you have?

Free

What platform is your computer?

windows

What issue are you seeing?

After updating the Codex desktop app, my previous chat history no longer appears in the app sidebar/history view. It looks like all previous conversations were wiped.
However, the threads may still exist internally: a new Codex thread was able to list older conversations such as Implement achievements feature, Redesign hero section, and others. So this appears to be a UI/sidebar/history indexing issue rather than actual data loss.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Feedback ID: 019e8f08-ac5a-7aa3-8409-5baf622b2fe8

Have existing Codex chat history in the desktop app.
Update the Codex desktop app.
Reopen the app after the update.
Check the sidebar/chat history list.
Previous chats are missing from the visible history list.

What is the expected behavior?

After updating the app, all existing chat history should still appear in the sidebar/history list. Existing conversations should remain searchable and accessible without needing to recover them through backend/thread tools.

Additional information

The missing threads do not appear to be deleted. The app/backend can still access older thread records, but the sidebar does not show them. This suggests the issue may be related to local history indexing, filtering, migration after update, or sidebar state not loading previous threads correctly.

View original on GitHub ↗

6 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 1 month ago

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

#26157
#26031
#25500
#25574
#25084

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twentyOne2x · 1 month ago

Adding impact/frequency data: this is not a rare one-off for me.

On June 3, 2026 alone, I had about 10 separate cases where I actively needed a missing thread and had to recover/surface it manually via exact ids, local state, deep links, pinning, or other workarounds.

That count is only the incidents I actively chased down. The broader problem appears larger: many repos now show no threads at all in Codex Desktop, even though local thread state/transcripts still exist. So the UI impact is not limited to those ~10 recovery events; those are just the ones that interrupted active work enough for me to investigate.

The pattern is consistent: the threads are not necessarily archived or deleted. The underlying local data remains present, but sidebar/search/project history fails to surface it reliably.

Impact: this is extremely disruptive for daily Codex Desktop use. It breaks trust in long-running work because I cannot rely on the app to show active conversations, and I keep spending time recovering threads instead of continuing work.

wangyaok1 · 1 month ago

Hi everyone, I'm tracking the same Codex Desktop missing-thread/sidebar-history issue on macOS.

For those affected here: did you eventually get all hidden project threads back in Desktop? If yes, what exact method worked durably for you?

Examples I'm trying to distinguish:

official update fixed it
restart/reindex fixed it
codex resume --all <thread-id> rehydrated it
repairing session_index.jsonl / state_5.sqlite / .codex-global-state.json fixed it
Codex Wake or another local recovery helper fixed it
app bundle / listAllThreads patch fixed it
nothing worked yet

In my case, the missing project threads still exist in ~/.codex/sessions and state_5.sqlite, but Desktop does not hydrate them back into the project sidebar after restart. Any confirmed durable fix would help. Please do not share private session contents; sanitized method/results are enough.

RogueMutant · 1 month ago

@wangyaok1
i was able to recover the chat history by opening an existing project, you can do this by opening a new conversation and using the "add new project" button. This doesnt work for normal chats, only projects.

wangyaok1 · 1 month ago

Adding a macOS datapoint after updating to the latest Desktop build.

Environment:

macOS 15.5 (24F74)
Apple Silicon / arm64
Codex Desktop: 26.608.12217
CFBundleVersion: 3722
Local storage: default ~/.codex

Recovery status on my affected project:

The update appears to have restored some previously missing threads.
It did not restore everything.
Older project threads are still missing from the Desktop sidebar/project history.
The local data still appears to exist. For the affected project, state_5.sqlite still has 251 active/non-archived rows with the expected project cwd.
Earlier checks also confirmed matching rollout JSONL/session files under ~/.codex/sessions.

So my current result is: 26.608.12217 looks like a partial recovery, not a full recovery. It would still be very helpful to have an official full local reindex/recovery command that rebuilds sidebar/project history from durable local state.

gifgiif · 1 month ago

I hit something very similar and made a python script that helped me recover the missing chats locally:

https://github.com/gifgiif/codex-chat-metadata-repair

In my case the chats were not actually deleted. The session data was still there in .codex/sessions/, and the thread records were still in .codex/state_5.sqlite, but some Codex metadata/index fields were empty or missing, so the chats stopped showing up in the sidebar.

The script only tries to repair local metadata/index state, mostly around:

.codex/state_5.sqlite
.codex/session_index.jsonl
.codex/sessions/**/*.jsonl

Just to be clear: this is not an official fix and probably won’t solve cases where Codex keeps rewriting/breaking the project index after every restart. But if your local session JSONL files and SQLite records are still there and the sidebar just lost track of them, it may help.