[BUG] Session Disappeared After Logout / Restart of Claude Code Desktop - HOW to restore the sessions ASAP???

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/23125
2. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/24545
3. https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/25524

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

Same here, Claude 1.1.3541 (1e65e4) 2026-02-18T19:23:37.000Z, System Mac, Claude Code Desktop - All Sessions gone after Closing and Repening Claude.

Same issue

Same issue on Claude 1.1.3647 (8f7c53) 2026-02-19T15:02:19.000Z.

When I close the Claude Desktop app and reopen it, all previous sessions are gone from the Code tab.

What's maybe worth mentioning is that the conversations are still present in ~/.claude/projects.

It's just that Claude Desktop can't find them for some reason.

My workaround is to go through the Claude CLI.

same problem. who know how fix it?

same issue here. please resolve this asap.

same here..

Same here. This sucks

same issue.. it's gone

same, but I found my old session in the .claude/projects folder, but I don't know how to re-import it into Claude Desktop

yep painful bug

Same issue here on macOS. Every time I close the Desktop app, all sessions in the sidebar are gone when I reopen it. This is really inconvenient and disrupts my workflow significantly. An official fix is urgently needed. Please prioritize this.

Same issue here also on macOS. All recent code sessions disappear if I close and reopen the app.

i asked claude itself to fix it lmao

i was something about the folder where the history are supposed to be saved doesnt exist, claude created it and it was fixed....

i delete the session so i dont remember where it was...

i asked claude itself to fix it lmao

I did the same (Claude output below).

Proceeding as suggested in Option 1 seems to have fixed it.

I found the root cause. In the LevelDB (the Desktop app's storage), the key
  LSS-cached-sessions contains:

  {"value": [], "tabId": "...", "timestamp": ...}

  The session cache is empty. The Desktop app stores its Code tab session list
  there, and it's currently an empty array — meaning on every restart it shows
  nothing.

  The older LDB files DO contain your session IDs (from ~/.claude/projects/),
  suggesting a key format change happened at some point (old format:
  cached-sessions, new format: LSS-cached-sessions) and the new cache was never
   populated.

  This is a bug. Here's what to try:

  Option 1 — Clear the LevelDB cache (restart to rebuild)

  Quit Claude Desktop first, then:
  # Backup first
  cp -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/Local\ Storage/leveldb
  ~/Desktop/leveldb-backup

  # Delete the cache
  rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/Local\ Storage/leveldb
  Then reopen Claude Desktop. It will recreate a fresh LevelDB. Whether this
  fixes the sidebar depends on whether the app can re-index sessions from
  ~/.claude/projects/ — it may or may not.

  Option 2 — Report the bug with these findings

  File at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues with:
  - Claude Desktop version: 1.1.3963
  - Claude Code version: 2.1.49
  - LSS-cached-sessions is {"value": []} in LevelDB (~/Library/Application
  Support/Claude/Local Storage/leveldb/)
  - Session .jsonl files exist in ~/.claude/projects/ but are not indexed
  - Sessions appear in sidebar during a session but disappear on restart
  - No sessions-index.json files exist in any project directory

  I'd start with Option 1 (after backing up), then file the bug either way so
  Anthropic can fix the root cause.

Same issue here on macOS. Hours of work gone.

Same issue as well.

I submitted two tickets regarding this issue. Had CC for 3 days and was met with mixed feelings. Praying this is resolved. Does the Claude team review these tickets within Gitbhub?

Claude code works fine!

Yea it seems to work now

@jfloodnet were you experiencing sessions being lost in your Claude code and now are able to see those that were originally lost? When you say it seems to work now, are you saying that you now have access to all of the previously lost sessions? For me, I'm still waiting for them to be either re-uploaded or the bug to be fixed, because it looked like many people are still dealing with the site mission. Just curious to see what you're referring to and what you have done to get it to work again.

Same issue on macos

this just happened again to me, session lost

The issue happened to me twice now, the first time I was able to restore by installing claude again and logging out and back into my account, this time its a bit more resistant and have not yet managed to get my sessions back.

UPDATE: I got the session back using CLI by going into my project dir and using: "claude --resume session-id" but this is in a terminal window, although good for now so that I can proceed, it not great, I hope a fix comes out soon

The way to get the session id is to go to your home dir and there is a .claude dir goto projects and if all is well you should see a list of your projects (fingers crossed). Go into one of your projects and look for a sessions-index.json file, in here you will see your session id. Then goto your project dir where you have your project files and type the command as mentioned above.

Same here. I usually use the claude code cli, but had one longer design and plan session in Claude Desktop (Code tab) which I lost.

The session is still shown in the desktop app sidebar, and the project directory in ~/.claude/projects is still there it seems, but no longer has the main session .jsonl file. And no corresponding plan in ~/.claude/plans left.

FWIW I did downgrade my claude code cli a week or two ago from 2.1.52 to 2.1.50 because of another bug, not sure if that triggered the loss of plan.

It happens to me today. Two sessions gone working on the mobile app. At first I thought it was me, but then it happened again. After I switched to other app in the phone to check something and then came back to Claude anything was there.

Almost an hour of refined work gone, millions of tokens thrown to garbage.

same issue. I just bought the max x5 plan and all of my work over the past 4 hours is completely gone, and I have burned through 21% of my session...

Version: 1.1.5368
OS: Windows 11 26200
Same problem: sessions gone from sidebar after app reset, data intact in .claude/projects/

This has been happening to me consistently too with the Claude Desktop app when I use the Code tab. After closing and re-opening the app, all my previous conversations are gone from the UI.

Macbook Pro 2021
Apple M1 Pro chip, 32GB memory
MacOS 26.2 (25C56)

This is still happening on MacOS. I can't access my Code chats on the desktop app.

Has anyone had support from Anthropic customer support team, yet? I've emailed and left support tickets weeks ago with no avail.

What i found out is the chats are still there and can be referenced. The bad side it still take time to find them and uses more tokens. But still sucks

New day, Code lost reference to all my chats again. I've reached out to Anthropic only today for this, but they took two weeks to reply to a previous issue of mine so I'm not confident this will be fixed in short times.

@StrawberryMew how do you do that? I know the chats are accessible via CLI, but I'd rather use Desktop.

i know in windows itsC:\Users\(account)\.claude\projects\C--claudeai for my pc
here is a viewer that claude created to view past chats for me but i just tell it to look for chat history
the chats are still on the computer some where. i just made it index old chats for faster lookups.
claude-chat-viewer.html

@StrawberryMew, that is correct! I did the same thing. I asked CC to build me a UI that pushes all updates and session history to a file that is similar to CC.

Whenever the sessions are lost, i just go to that html file and click on the session tab I want to review, and review it.

That's the best workaround.

also, Anthropic just got back to me regarding this and am talking to them now. Will keep you all updated.

Today, I updated Claude for Windows to version 1.1.7203 (034f07) and I now have an "All Projects" and also the prior sessions, grouped as "Today", "Yesterday", "Older" in the Code tab, which has been missing since I started using it.

me too, I also meet the same problem and I don't know I has been so long a time that claude didn't move on it!

This happened to me today, I am trying to find a conversation happened in last friday and today its gone not showing in the list

If you want your agent's context to survive between sessions — not just the session itself, but what the agent learned — there's now an MCP server for that:

npx archetypal-ai

Adds recall(), remember(), and checkpoint() tools. Your agent saves what it knows. Next session, it picks up where it left off. Auto-checkpoints on session end via SessionEnd hook.

Won't restore lost sessions, but prevents the loss from happening again.

https://github.com/archetypal-ai/archetypal-ai

This is happening to me even mid-session. Logouts not required to reproduce the issue. You can see in the attached screenshot thatI am actively working in a pinned session that disappeared from the pin menu.

<img width="1074" height="692" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3d98e3ca-9359-4096-9d5f-3b6701772ce4" />

HAS ANYONE FOUND A SOLUTION FOR THIS YET? Anyone tried uninstalling claude code cli and seeing if that works? Feel like it could be a conflict between the two.

For folks landing here from search: the same "sessions disappeared" symptom can have several different on-disk causes, and the recovery path depends on which bucket you are in.

Quick decision tree from a later investigation (#56172):

~/.claude/projects/*.jsonl exists, but Desktop has no local_*.json metadata
  -> Desktop wrapper/index missing; may be recoverable by synthesizing metadata.

Desktop local_*.json exists but has no cliSessionId
  -> picker/sidebar can show the session, but the pane may be blank because Desktop has no bridge to the JSONL; often recoverable by backfilling cliSessionId.

Desktop local_*.json has cliSessionId, but the referenced JSONL is missing
  -> transcript payload is gone from disk; recovery needs backup, Time Machine/VSS/OneDrive version history, or an external transcript index.

MSIX/Windows has local_*.json.tmp files but no .json
  -> likely EXDEV atomic rename failure; see the MSIX/EXDEV issues.

Important before trying any repair scripts: fully quit Claude Desktop, including tray/background process, then verify no claude.exe is running. Desktop can keep metadata cached in memory and later flush it back to disk, undoing external repairs or resurrecting deleted duplicate metadata files.

Yep just reinstalled from claude.ai/download rather than from windows store - think that was the issue due to MSIX package data folder

Faced this issue today on Claude for MAC Version 1.6259.1

The bug: You close Claude desktop, open it again, and the Recent list on the left is empty. Pinned sessions also
▎ disappear. Reinstalling doesn't help.
▎

▎
▎ What caused it: At some point you changed a Windows setting so new apps install on another drive (like D:) instead
▎ of C: — usually to save space on C:. That setting is fine for most apps, but Claude desktop has a bug: when it's not
▎ directly on C:, it can save things but can't read them back on next launch. That's why Recent and pinned sessions
▎ keep disappearing.
▎
▎ Fix:
▎ 1. Settings → System → Storage → Advanced storage settings → "New apps will save to:" → switch back to C:.
▎ 2. In PowerShell: winget uninstall Anthropic.Claude
▎ 3. Download Claude again from https://claude.com/download and install it.
▎
▎ Heads-up: Claude will now take up its full size on your C: drive — the space you originally tried to save. There's
▎ no way around it until Anthropic fixes the bug.

If you're on macOS and have Time Machine, this script recovers the JSONL itself: https://github.com/garrettmoss/restore-claude-history
Slotting into @BasedGPT's decision tree above — specifically the third bucket ("Desktop local_*.json has cliSessionId, but the referenced JSONL is missing"). (@alexkli, @dogsorgods, that would be you guys)

Caveats:

• macOS + Time Machine only. No help on Windows/Linux or if you weren't running TM before the deletion.
• Restores the on-disk ~/.claude/projects/<slug>/*.jsonl file. If your Desktop metadata also needs repair afterward to point at the restored file, @BasedGPT's claude-code-session-recovery handles that on Windows; Desktop-side restore on macOS is on my roadmap.
• Buckets 1 and 2 (data on disk, Desktop UI confused) — this won't help, [yet, although working on it]; the data isn't gone.

Also filed issue #62272 on the root cause — cleanupPeriodDays being bypassed by some code paths, with three concrete asks (honor / warn / surface in UI).

Session file corrupted by unexpected system crash (BSOD) — partial recovery possible

Scenario: A Code session (pinned, manually renamed, tied to a local repo) disappeared after a Windows BSOD that occurred while Claude was actively running and writing to the session file.

Root cause identified: The BSOD caused a torn write to the session JSON file in %AppData%\Roaming\Claude\claude-code-sessions\{org}\{user}\local_{id}.json. The file survived but was overwritten with 5,708 bytes of null/space characters — valid file, invalid JSON. The app silently skips unreadable session files, so the session vanished from the sidebar entirely with no error shown to the user.

What made diagnosis hard:

• The session did not appear under any filter (active, archived, show all)
• The MCP session management tools (list_sessions) also did not return it
• No error or warning is shown in the UI when a session file is unreadable

Manual recovery steps that worked (session metadata only):

1. Located the corrupted file in %AppData%\Roaming\Claude\claude-code-sessions\
2. Identified it as the missing session by process of elimination (file existed but ConvertFrom-Json returned null)
3. Reconstructed the JSON manually with known fields: sessionId (from filename), cwd, title, titleSource: "user", isArchived: false, isPinned: true
4. Wrote the reconstructed JSON — the app picked it up on next launch and even auto-populated PR metadata from GitHub

What could NOT be recovered: The conversation message history. The chat content appears to be stored in LevelDB (%AppData%\Roaming\Claude\Local Storage\leveldb\) — binary search confirmed the session content is still there — but without a way to re-associate the LevelDB keys with the restored session ID, the messages are inaccessible.

Suggested improvements:

1. Atomic writes for session JSON files — write to a .tmp file first, then rename, so a crash mid-write never corrupts the target file
2. Validation on load — if a session file exists but is unreadable/empty, show a warning rather than silently skipping it
3. Graceful degradation — if session JSON is corrupt but a matching LevelDB entry exists, offer to recover the session
4. Session file backup — keep a .bak copy of the last valid write alongside the session file

---
This comment was generated by Claude Code on behalf of the user, based on a live debugging session where the above steps were performed and verified.

Why this happens

Claude Desktop stores Claude Code sessions on disk in a directory keyed by two UUIDs:

• your organization UUID
• your account UUID

The general layout is:

<data-root>/
  claude-code-sessions/<org-uuid>/<account-uuid>/local_*.json
  local-agent-mode-sessions/<org-uuid>/<account-uuid>/rpm/...

When you log out and log back in — especially into a different account, or sometimes even into the same account after a token reset — Claude Desktop may receive a fresh org-uuid and account-uuid from the server.

It then starts reading sessions from the new folder:

<new-org>/<new-account>/

That folder is empty, so your sessions disappear from the sidebar.

Your old files usually are not deleted. Claude Desktop is simply no longer looking at the old folder.

You can verify this by listing the sessions directory. You will likely see two account folders side by side:

• one older folder containing many local_*.json files
• one newer, mostly empty folder created around the time you logged back in

---

Symptom

You logged out of Claude Desktop, logged back in, and all Claude Code sessions disappeared from the sidebar.

---

Cause

The new login received a new account UUID.

Your old sessions are still on disk, but they are stored in the old UUID-based folder, which Claude Desktop no longer reads.

---

General fix

These steps apply to all platforms.

1. Quit Claude Desktop completely.

1. Open the Claude data directory for your operating system.

1. Look inside:

claude-code-sessions/

You should see one or more folders like this:

claude-code-sessions/<org-uuid>/<account-uuid>/

Find:

• the old account folder containing your existing local_*.json files
• the new account folder that is empty or freshly created

Folder timestamps usually make this easy to identify.

1. Copy the files from the old folder into the new folder.

Do not move them. Copy them, so you keep a backup.

1. Optionally do the same for agent-mode state:

local-agent-mode-sessions/<org>/<account>/rpm/

1. Restart Claude Desktop.

Your sessions should reappear in the sidebar.

---

macOS

Data root:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/

Copy Claude Code sessions:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude-code-sessions
cp -an "<old-org>/<old-account>"/. "<new-org>/<new-account>"/

Optional: copy agent-mode state:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions
mkdir -p "<new-org>/<new-account>/rpm"
cp -an "<old-org>/<old-account>/rpm"/. "<new-org>/<new-account>/rpm"/

---

Linux

Data root:

~/.config/Claude/

Copy Claude Code sessions:

cd ~/.config/Claude/claude-code-sessions
cp -an "<old-org>/<old-account>"/. "<new-org>/<new-account>"/

Optional: copy agent-mode state:

cd ~/.config/Claude/local-agent-mode-sessions
mkdir -p "<new-org>/<new-account>/rpm"
cp -an "<old-org>/<old-account>/rpm"/. "<new-org>/<new-account>/rpm"/

cp -an means:

• -a: archive mode, preserving metadata like timestamps
• -n: no-clobber, so existing files in the destination are not overwritten

---

Windows

Data root:

%APPDATA%\Claude\

Usually this resolves to something like:

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Claude\

PowerShell

Copy Claude Code sessions:

cd "$env:APPDATA\Claude\claude-code-sessions"
Copy-Item "<old-org>\<old-account>\*" "<new-org>\<new-account>\" -Recurse

Optional: copy agent-mode state:

cd "$env:APPDATA\Claude\local-agent-mode-sessions"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "<new-org>\<new-account>\rpm" | Out-Null
Copy-Item "<old-org>\<old-account>\rpm\*" "<new-org>\<new-account>\rpm\" -Recurse

Command Prompt

Copy Claude Code sessions:

cd /d "%APPDATA%\Claude\claude-code-sessions"
xcopy "<old-org>\<old-account>" "<new-org>\<new-account>\" /E /I /Y

Optional: copy agent-mode state:

cd /d "%APPDATA%\Claude\local-agent-mode-sessions"
mkdir "<new-org>\<new-account>\rpm" 2>nul
xcopy "<old-org>\<old-account>\rpm" "<new-org>\<new-account>\rpm\" /E /I /Y

---

Caveat

If you changed accounts, for example by logging in with a different email address, you are moving local session content across identities.

That may be fine for personal use, but be aware that the sessions originally belonged to another account.

---

How to avoid this in the future

Before logging out, note your current UUID-based session path:

claude-code-sessions/<org-uuid>/<account-uuid>/

That is currently the most reliable way to find your local sessions again.

Claude Desktop does not appear to provide a built-in session export or account-merge UI at the moment.