[BUG][Claude Desktop] Sort by: Recency has no effect when Group by: Project

Status Open

Maintainer reply None cached

Activity 16 comments · opened May 4, 2026

Note: This is a bug in the Claude Desktop app, not the Claude Code CLI. The anthropics/claude-code issue tracker appears to be the closest public reporting venue — please re-route if there's a better one. The CLI-specific fields in the template (Claude Code version, terminal, platform) have been answered as best-effort and the app version is included in the body.

What's Wrong?

In the Claude Desktop session organizer (the sliders/filter popover at the top of the sessions list), setting Sort by → Recency has no effect when Group by → Project is also selected. Sessions remain ordered alphabetically by project name (2023-macbook-pro, 2025, advanced-dungeons-and-dragons, ai-gm, ...) regardless of which "Sort by" option is chosen.

The "Recency" radio shows as checked in the menu, but the visible order on the page does not change.

What Should Happen?

When Sort by: Recency is selected, project groups (and/or the sessions within them) should be ordered by most-recent activity first, not alphabetically by project name. The current behavior makes the "Sort by" control appear to do nothing whenever grouping is enabled, which is the default.

It's also worth clarifying in the UI whether "Sort by" is meant to order the groups (projects) or the sessions inside each group — currently neither appears to respond to the Recency setting under Group by: Project.

Steps to Reproduce

Open Claude Desktop and view the sessions list.
Click the sliders icon at the top-right of the sessions list to open the filter/sort popover.
Confirm Group by is set to Project (default).
Click Sort by → choose Alphabetically. Note the order of projects.
Click Sort by → choose Recency. The selected radio updates to Recency, but the order of projects on screen does not change — they remain alphabetical.
For comparison: change Group by to a different value (e.g., none) and Sort by → Recency does take effect there.

Additional Information

Application: Claude Desktop (macOS) — not the Claude Code CLI.
Claude Desktop version: Claude 1.5354.0 (9a9e3d) 2026-04-29T01:14:34.000Z
OS: macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 (a) (25D771280a)
Screenshot of the popover with Group by: Project and Sort by: Recency selected is attached below.

The "Claude Code Version", "Platform", and "Terminal" fields in the template are not applicable to this bug (it's the desktop app, not the CLI), but the form requires them — values entered are placeholders.

View original on GitHub ↗

6 Comments

IonutLupsan · 3 months ago

Would be great to have this fixed, I makes life so much easier when working with multiple projects at a time.

crux311 · 3 months ago

+1 on this — seeing the same on Claude Desktop 1.5354.0 / macOS. One narrowing that may help triage: with Group by: Project selected, sessions within each project group do reorder by Recency — it's only the project groups themselves that stay alphabetically sorted regardless of the Sort by setting. So the symptom is specifically "Sort by has no effect on group-level ordering," not on session-level ordering. This overlaps with #55225, which asks for project groups to sort by most-recent activity.

scott-peterson-gladly · 3 months ago

+1 from Windows — though the Windows behavior is narrower than the OP's macOS repro, which seems worth flagging for triage.

Environment

Claude for Windows 1.7196.0 (2dbd78)
Windows 11 Pro (10.0.26200)

Behavior on Windows

Group by → Project: Sort by → Recency works. Project group headings reorder by recency as expected. (Possibly diverges from the macOS behavior in the OP.)
Group by → Custom Group: Sort by → Recency only takes effect for the Ungrouped bucket. Conversations inside named Custom Groups don't reorder when I flip Alphabetically → Recency.

So on Windows the bug appears scoped to user-defined Custom Groups specifically — auto-derived Project groups respect Sort by, but Custom Groups don't. Looks like the recency sort pass is being applied to the implicit Ungrouped bucket but skipped for members of named Custom Groups.

Related: #55225.

---
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>

CompanionLink · 3 months ago

+1 from me too. Makes Projects much less useful.

idevchris · 2 months ago

Happening for me too since Claude 1.13576.0 (1290fc)

multifresh · 1 month ago

This is a Claude Desktop UI bug, not a CLI issue — requesting the invalid label be removed and this routed to the desktop app team.

The invalid / "not related to Claude Code" label looks like an auto-triage misfire. This is a reproducible bug in the Claude Code desktop app's session sidebar.

Environment

Claude Desktop (macOS) v1.5354.0
Sidebar session organizer (the sliders/filter popover)

Steps to reproduce

Open the sidebar filter popover (sliders icon on the list header).
Set Group by → Project.
Set Sort by → Recency.

Expected: project groups (and/or sessions within them) reorder most-recent-first.

Actual: the Recency radio shows as selected, but the list stays in pure alphabetical order by project name. The sort control has no visible effect while Group by: Project is active.

Confirmed workaround: set Group by → any value other than Project (e.g. none) and Recency sorting takes effect immediately — which isolates the bug to the Group by: Project + Sort by: Recency interaction specifically, not the sort itself.

The common, reasonable expectation is group by project, ordered by recency within/across groups — that combination is currently impossible. Related: #59282, #56067.

Could a maintainer please remove invalid and re-triage to the desktop team? Happy to provide a screen recording if useful.

Showing cached comments. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗