Windows 10: saved projects disappeared from sidebar after automatic Codex update, while chats remain accessible

What issue are you seeing?

After Codex Desktop updated on Windows 10, all of my saved projects disappeared from the left sidebar. I did not manually click an Update button before this happened.

The actual historical chats are still present under Recents and can still be opened. When opened, they appear to retain the correct project context, which makes this look like a project/sidebar indexing or mapping regression rather than actual conversation deletion.

I have used Codex projects regularly for months, so losing the project organization makes it much harder to resume ongoing work even though the underlying chats appear to still exist.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Use Codex Desktop on Windows 10 with multiple existing saved projects and historical chats.
2. Allow the app to update.
3. Reopen Codex Desktop.
4. Observe that no projects or project folders appear under the left hand "Projects" tab.
5. Check Recents and observe that historical chats still exist and can still be opened.
6. Open one of those chats and observe that it still appears associated with its prior project context.

Restarting the app and restarting my PC did not restore the missing projects/project list.

What is the expected behavior?

Existing projects and their chat grouping should remain visible after an app update. If the underlying chats and project associations still exist, the sidebar should rebuild and display them correctly.

What is the actual behavior?

ALL saved projects disappear from the sidebar after the update, while the chats themselves remain accessible through Recents.

Platform

• Windows 10
• Codex Desktop (or chatgpt desktop?)

Additional information

I found other reports that appear closely related, including #27906, where existing project chats stop appearing under their project after an update, and #29130/#19873, which describe Windows sidebar/project history disappearing while the underlying local thread data remains available.

I am intentionally not attaching screenshots yet, but I can provide them if they would help confirm the UI state.

This is especially disruptive because projects are a core part of how I organize ongoing Codex work, and the update made that structure appear lost even though the conversations themselves seem recoverable.