Desktop app: context usage now takes up to 3 clicks to see (session donut switched to weekly usage, context moved to Session Rail)
What changed
In the desktop app (Code tab), the donut in the bottom right of every session panel used to fill clockwise in blue as the session's context filled up. You could tell at a glance how close a session was to compaction, across every session you had open.
In the current version that donut shows weekly usage instead. Context usage has moved into the Session Rail.
Why this is a regression
To see a session's context usage now, you have to:
- Click the Session Rail toggle button to show the side panel
- Find the context panel in the rail
- Click the context panel to expand it and see the context info (the collapsed panel should show the percentage, but often doesn't)
That's up to three steps, per session, for a number that used to need zero. People who run several sessions side by side need to eyeball context hundreds of times per day.
The collapsed panel's bar is also tiny, a pill about the size of a toggle switch. At that size you can't tell 10% from 40%, and it reads as an on/off toggle, not a gauge.
And even if the panel itself were fixed, it still lives in the Session Rail, a side panel a lot of people keep closed because it eats screen space. For them, context is always at least one click away. That's why the fix belongs in the per-session donut, which is always visible.
What would fix it
Any one of these:
- Put context usage back in the per-session donut
- Let the user pick what the donut shows: context, weekly usage, or both
- Replace the context panel's indicator, which looks like a toggle switch, with one you can actually read. Right now there's no telling 10% from 45%.
Related: #90708 (same request from before the Session Rail existed), #102230 (Session Rail context bar doesn't update).
Environment: Windows 11, Claude desktop app, Code tab.
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