[BUG] Claude Code desktop (Code tab sidebar): "Sort by" has no effect on project group ordering — groups are always alphabetical

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues
• [x] This is a single bug report
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

In the Claude Code desktop app's Code tab sidebar, the Sort by control in the filter popover (sliders icon) has no effect on how project group headers are ordered when Group by is set to Project. Groups always render in pure alphabetical order.

Sessions inside each group do reorder correctly by recency. Only the group headers are stuck.

This is not a stale or unsaved preference — the app persists the selection correctly. From the desktop app's Local Storage (zustand store):

{
  "groupByByMode": { "code": "project" },
  "sortByByMode":  { "code": "recency" },
  "homeProjectsSortBy": "activity"
}

sortByByMode is recency, the radio renders as selected, and the output is still alphabetical. The control is inert at the group level.

For reference, the shipped bundle defines exactly three Sort by values:

| value | label |
|---|---|
| alpha | Alphabetically |
| created | Created time |
| recency | Recency |

None of the three changes group-header order under Group by: Project.

What Should Happen?

With Sort by → Recency and Group by → Project, project groups should be ordered by most recent activity first.

Failing that, the UI should at least disambiguate whether Sort by governs the groups or the sessions within each group — right now it silently means the latter only, which makes the control look broken.

Worth noting: an activity-based ordering already exists in the app as homeProjectsSortBy: "activity" (label "Last activity"), which drives the Projects view. The sidebar has no equivalent for group headers.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open the Claude Code desktop app, Code tab.
2. Click the sliders icon at the top-right of the sidebar to open the filter/sort popover.
3. Set Group by → Project.
4. Set Sort by → Alphabetically. Note the order of the project group headers.
5. Set Sort by → Recency. The radio updates to Recency, but the group headers do not move — still alphabetical.
6. Set Sort by → Created time. Same — no change.
7. For contrast, set Group by → None. Recency now takes effect immediately on the flat list.

So the bug is scoped specifically to group-level ordering, not to the sort itself.

Impact

With ~70 active projects this makes the sidebar hard to use:

• Group by: Project — groups are alphabetical, so finding the project that just needs attention means scrolling a long list whose order has no relationship to what I'm working on.
• Group by: None — recency works, but rows no longer show which project a session belongs to.

Neither view answers the everyday question "which session needs me right now?"

Cross-platform divergence (worth flagging for triage)

Reports on #56060 and #70104 describe different behavior depending on platform and group type:

• macOS — project group headers alphabetical; Sort by inert (this report).
• Windows 1.7196.0 — project groups do respect Recency; only user-defined Custom Groups ignore it.
• #70104 / #72126 — custom groups appear locked to creation order; separately, some users report groups auto-sorting by activity and "constantly jumping around" — the opposite complaint.

This suggests the group-ordering comparator is implemented differently per group type and per platform, rather than there being one intended behavior.

Environment

• Claude Code desktop app: 1.24012.9 (macOS)
• Bundled Claude Code: 2.1.219
• Operating System: macOS 26.5.2 (25F84)
• Platform: Anthropic API (Max subscription, direct — not Bedrock/Vertex)
• Terminal/Shell: Other — n/a, this is the desktop app UI, not a terminal session
• Is this a regression? Yes — project ordering previously followed activity/date. I can't pin the exact version where it changed.

The Platform and Terminal fields are required by the bug template but are not relevant here: this is a sidebar rendering/ordering bug, independent of which API backend serves model calls or which terminal is used.

Related issues

This report consolidates several threads that stalled without a maintainer ever weighing in:

• #56060 — the same bug. Still open, but labeled invalid by auto-triage. A re-triage request on 2026-07-06 went unanswered.
• #55225 — feature request for exactly this behavior. Correctly labeled enhancement + area:desktop, then auto-closed as inactive on 2026-06-01 with no human response.
• #59282 — Projects "Recent" sort uses stale timestamps. Auto-closed as stale 2026-07-04.
• #70104, #72126 — manual group reordering / pinning. Both open.
• #78115, #78857 — other recent Code-tab sidebar regressions (Group by PR status removed; project filter removed while still documented).

Note on the invalid label on #56060

That issue was labeled invalid because its author opened with a disclaimer that it was "a bug in the Claude Desktop app, not the Claude Code CLI." The repo's auto-triage applies invalid when the subject is the Claude Desktop/Mobile app.

This is the Claude Code desktop app's Code tab sidebar — the same surface documented at https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop and introduced in the April 2026 desktop redesign. It is in scope for this tracker.

Additional Information

Two screenshots are attached in a follow-up comment (some session titles redacted):

1. Group by: Project + Sort by: Recency — the popover shows Recency selected, while the visible group headers run ai-engineer → ai-workshop → … → angelsvsdevils, i.e. strictly alphabetical. Changing Sort by does not move them.

2. Group by: None + Sort by: Recency — the same Sort by setting works correctly on the flat list, confirming the sort itself is fine and the defect is at the group level. Note that rows in this mode carry no project label, so this is not a usable substitute for grouped-by-project.