Older Codex Chats in VS Code Disappear After 20-Chat Limit

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

• #6126
• #4964

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Yes, the extension limits the number of displayed tasks in the task history to 20 currently. They are still present (you can find them in .codex/sessions), but the UI currently shows only the last 20.

@gpeal, was this done for performance reasons? What do you think about increasing this limit?

Is there any proper way to configure to show all the chats or search through any past chat ? , beacuse accessing through .codex/sessions is i think a rough way.

Currently, the extension hard codes the limit at 20. The Codex CLI does not have such a limit, so you can access your older conversations using the CLI.

You can use https://github.com/codexia-team/codexia to show all of the history based on project.

I hope vscode extension will also cater this issue so its easy to access past 20 chats.

I think they use the time to do more important things, so that I'll continue improving Codexia.

You can use https://github.com/codexia-team/codexia to show all of the history based on project.

This doesn't work for me. I can see the list of chats, but they don't open when clicked

@fdterr What's your platform? Codex version?

Hi @etraut-openai , thanks for the clarification about the 20-task limit.

Just want to share another perspective as someone who uses Codex pretty heavily.
For a lot of developers, each task is basically part of an ongoing workflow — debugging, multi-file refactors, or long feature work. When the history rolls over after 20 items, it becomes pretty hard to:

• reopen older prompts that still matter
• look back at explanations or steps that were generated earlier
• search through older sessions when trying to trace how an issue evolved

The data is technically still in .codex/sessions, but digging through the raw files isn’t really a practical day-to-day solution.

Even increasing the limit a bit (like 50–100), or making it configurable, would help a lot of people who work on longer tasks or use Codex throughout the whole day.

If performance was the reason for the cap, things like lazy-loading or a simple “load more” button might already be enough to keep the UI responsive while still giving access to older tasks.

Just wanted to highlight this because the 20-task limit ends up being a noticeable friction point for anyone doing more than quick one-off prompts. Codex has been awesome so far, and having more flexible history access would make it even smoother to use daily.

Thanks for taking a look!

Hi @etraut-openai , thanks for the clarification about the 20-task limit. Just want to share another perspective as someone who uses Codex pretty heavily. For a lot of developers, each task is basically part of an ongoing workflow — debugging, multi-file refactors, or long feature work. When the history rolls over after 20 items, it becomes pretty hard to: reopen older prompts that still matter look back at explanations or steps that were generated earlier * search through older sessions when trying to trace how an issue evolved The data is technically still in .codex/sessions, but digging through the raw files isn’t really a practical day-to-day solution. Even increasing the limit a bit (like 50–100), or making it configurable, would help a lot of people who work on longer tasks or use Codex throughout the whole day. If performance was the reason for the cap, things like lazy-loading or a simple “load more” button might already be enough to keep the UI responsive while still giving access to older tasks. Just wanted to highlight this because the 20-task limit ends up being a noticeable friction point for anyone doing more than quick one-off prompts. Codex has been awesome so far, and having more flexible history access would make it even smoother to use daily. Thanks for taking a look!

@rockmandash , totally ! , this was even what i faced and point i wanted to highlight @etraut-openai . Thanks!.

@rockmandash, that's well articulated. Thanks for sharing.

@fdterr @AL-Cybision you can give WayLog a try. It's an opensource VS Code extension. History save automatically in .waylog/history folder, but you can search and save what you want.

• repo: https://github.com/shayne-snap/WayLog
• maketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=waylog.waylog

Hi, this feature is really needed, there is some chat which is pure information that i need to read again. Scroll through the session files is so hard to see.

Would be a lovely to see more then 20 active chats

Thanks codex team for the great product

Version 0.4.62 includes an update to the chat limit. I have 26 chats in total and I can see them all.
Thank you to those who did the update.

You can ask Codex to patch the Codex plugin as described in #15368. It worked surprisingly well for me. Just give Codex the link.