[BUG] Desktop 1.22209.0: sidebar project filter removed — docs still document it

A similar issue. Please restore this feature. It's impossible to work without it!

I also need this feature. Please bring it back @claude

Surprising if removing this was intentional - the sidebar is a sudden mess of chats and projects that have long been irrelevant.

Surprising if removing this was intentional - the sidebar is a sudden mess of chats and projects that have long been irrelevant.

Seriously. I now have to manually group them together. Which has created more mess.

For the time being I'm using github desktop app and using routines to sort it.

I don't understand why they would remove such a simple feature and make decisions for users. If users want to filter, let them; if they don't, they don't have to. Who did it bother?

This is definitely a step backward, I was wishing they add the same filters to the mobile app to help with Remote Controlled sessions (code tab), and here we have it removed on the Desktop App!

I agree, this is really annoying. I can't imagine why it was removed?

CC @ThariqS

I'll switch to Codex if they don't bring back the filter in Claude. Why is it so hard to just bring back a feature? It's been two weeks already

I have 50 projects that I don't want to delete - why should I have to go through this trouble?

Please bring this feature back. Why would you remove it? I just wasted two hours trying to figure out where that disappeared, then almost filing a new issue for this, since neither Claude nor the pop-up "Fin AI Agent" found THIS issue...so now I'm here and subscribed. If LLM-s are supposed to bring this new revolution in programming how come you - the creators of this wonderful new technology - don't catch such regressions before shipping? Or was this a managerial/design decision? In this case how about letting actual programmers make these decisions, or better yet, consulting your users first?

Same regression here, but on the Home (Início) sidebar, not just the Code tab —
so the scope of this issue is wider than currently recorded.

Environment

• OS: Windows
• Claude Desktop: 1.26832.0 (6 Aug 2026)
• UI language: pt-BR

What changed
Until recently the sidebar list could be grouped by project. It is gone as of 1.26832.0:
the "Group by" menu (Agrupar por) now offers only Date, Type, Unread, Status,
Custom groups, None. The Projects section itself still exists — it is the grouping of
chats/tasks by project that was removed.

I cannot pin the exact version that dropped it from the Home sidebar, only that it is
absent in 1.26832.0. This issue reports it for 1.22209.0 in the Code tab, so either the
same change landed in both surfaces or it propagated later.

Why this matters
I run several unrelated client workstreams in parallel. Grouping by project was the only
way to keep them visually separated in the sidebar. "Custom groups" is not an equivalent
replacement: it requires manual assignment and does not inherit the project association
that already exists in the app, so the same information has to be maintained twice.

Changelog / docs mismatch
I checked the in-app release notes for 1.25927.0 (4 Aug) and 1.26832.0 (6 Aug) — neither
mentions removing project grouping. 1.26832.0 in fact adds project-related features
("Start a new project" in the "Add to project" menu), which makes the removal of project
grouping read as unintentional. The documentation still describes grouping sessions by
project.

If this was intentional, please document it; if not, please restore it.

Please for the love of god restore this feature. It's been a total productivity nosedive for me ever since this was removed - I'm a freelancer across many projects.

Confirming this is still broken in Desktop 1.49585.0 (macOS) as of September 2026 —
almost two months since the original report, and it's now spread beyond the Code
tab (see the Home sidebar report above from Aug 6).

The "Group by: Project" workaround still doesn't solve it — collapsed groups don't
stay collapsed across restarts, so there's no persistent way to hide irrelevant
projects. For anyone running many parallel projects the sidebar is currently
unusable as a navigation tool.

Given how many people have hit this independently (Code tab, Home sidebar, Cowork
task list) and how clearly it contradicts the current docs, could we get a status
update from the team — even just confirmation of whether this is being worked on?

I use Cowork to run several businesses. The structure I need is three levels:

Section = business (e.g. The Reserve)
Project = client or department within that business (e.g. Expandia), with its own folders, instructions and memory
Chats = individual pieces of work inside that project

At the moment I can add a chat to a project, but the project doesn't show in the sidebar and there's no Group by Project option. So the project gives a chat context but gives me no way to find it. To keep any structure I have to also pin every chat into a manual section and prefix its name with the client, then move each new chat out of Ungrouped by hand. That's duplicate admin on every chat.

Requests:

• Show projects in the sidebar, with their chats nested underneath.
• Let sections contain projects, not just chats, so the hierarchy is section > project > chat.
• File new chats started from a project under that project automatically instead of in Ungrouped.
• Bring back Group by Project and the project filter until the above ships.

Same problem here on macOS (Claude desktop, Code tab), and it's gotten worse with the new sections layout.

How I worked before: Most of my work runs over SSH on one big remote machine, with some local work on my Mac and some remote/cloud sessions. In the sidebar filter I set Environment → SSH and Group by → Project. That gave me a clean list of my SSH sessions grouped by project folder, and I could start a new chat right inside a project folder. It was the whole reason the sidebar worked for me.

What happens now:

• The environment filter (Local / SSH / Cloud / Remote) is gone. I can't hide sessions from other environments anymore.
• "Group by project" now groups by machine, not by folder. Since nearly all my ~240 sessions are on the same SSH box, they all land under a single heading.
• The only way to split them by folder is to create a custom section per project and file every session by hand. New sessions don't file themselves.
• Custom sections can't be reordered, and long sections keep growing with "Show more".

What I'm asking for:

1. Bring back the Environment filter (at minimum SSH vs Local vs Cloud).
2. Bring back grouping by project folder within an environment.
3. Or give us a setting to switch back to the previous sidebar layout.

The docs (https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop) still say you can "filter sessions by status, project, or environment", so this looks like a regression rather than an intended change. Thanks!