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Codex Issues / #36077

[Windows app] Deleted local project remains selectable in Settings > Environments

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Jul 30, 2026 by sdcins

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

26.721.4979.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

After deleting a local project in the Codex Desktop app, the project disappears from the sidebar and is no longer returned by the app's current project list. However, it remains selectable under Settings > Environments, including after restarting the app.

The project's original directory no longer exists, so the environment selector is displaying a stale project entry.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Add or create a local project in Codex Desktop.
  2. Start at least one task associated with that project.
  3. Delete the project from Codex.
  4. Restart Codex.
  5. Open Settings > Environments.
  6. Open the project selector.
  7. Observe that the deleted project is still listed.

What is the expected behavior?

Deleting a project should remove it from all project selectors, including Settings > Environments. Alternatively, the environment selector should automatically filter out local projects whose directories no longer exist.

Additional information

Local inspection showed that the deleted project was still referenced in:

  • %USERPROFILE%\.codex\.codex-global-state.json
  • %USERPROFILE%\.codex\.codex-global-state.json.bak
  • local-projects
  • thread-project-assignments
  • A stale trusted-project entry in config.toml
  • An empty metadata file under .chatgpt-projects\.metadata

Editing only the primary global-state file while Codex was running did not work because the app wrote the stale in-memory state back to disk.

The stale entry disappeared only after fully quitting Codex, backing up local state, removing the stale project and assignment from both global-state files, removing the nonexistent project's trusted-path entry and empty metadata, and restarting Codex.

This suggests that project deletion is not being reconciled across all persisted project/environment state.

Related issues:

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