Sessions disappear from recent conversations on desktop app restart (Windows)

Resolved 💬 1 comment Opened Apr 29, 2026 by clintjohnson119 Closed May 31, 2026

Bug Description

After closing the Claude Code desktop app on Windows and reopening it the next day, previous sessions no longer appear in the recent conversations list. The underlying .jsonl session files are confirmed to still exist on disk — the data is not deleted — but the desktop app UI does not surface them.

This has occurred repeatedly (at least twice), making the desktop app unusable for day-over-day continuity without resorting to the terminal.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Claude Code desktop app on Windows 11
  2. Start a conversation in a project
  3. Work through a session (session grows to substantial size)
  4. Close the app and reboot the computer
  5. Reopen the app the next day, navigate to the same project
  6. Check recent conversations list

Expected Behavior

Previous sessions appear in the recent conversations list and can be resumed from the UI.

Actual Behavior

Sessions are absent from the list. Manually inspecting C:\Users\<redacted>\.claude\projects\<project>\ confirms the .jsonl files are present and intact (confirmed via entrypoint: "claude-desktop" in session metadata — these were created in the desktop app, not the CLI).

Workaround

None within the desktop app. CLI workaround (claude --resume <session-id>) exists but is not acceptable for desktop users.

Environment

  • OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
  • Claude Code version: 2.1.119
  • Entrypoint: claude-desktop

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