[BUG] Claude Desktop (macOS): chats within a project are not ordered by recency — fixed order, unaffected by restart
Preflight Checklist
- [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
- [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
- [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code
What's Wrong?
This is the Claude desktop app for Mac (Home/Projects sidebar), not the Claude Code CLI. Filing here per the area:desktop / platform:macos labelling on #59282 and the desktop reports in #84332, #78236 and #83937.
Chats listed under a project in the desktop sidebar are no longer ordered by recency. The order appears fixed and does not change when a chat receives new activity, and is unaffected by restarting the app.
Concrete case: a chat named "BLUEPRINT SIMULATION" received a reply 4 minutes earlier. It was not visible in the project's sidebar list, not visible after clicking "View all", and only appeared after clicking "Show more" and scrolling — positioned below chats last used on Jun 30, Jul 8 and May 26.
The list is not sorted by recency in either direction. The Recents panel shows the identical order with timestamps out of sequence (22h, 4d, 5d, 6d, 5d, 2d, 2d, 6h, 12h, 6h), so both views appear to share one ordering source.
There is no setting to restore the old behaviour: the sidebar filter menu (Type / Status / Last activity / Group by) has no sort option, and Group by only offers Date, Type, Unread, Status, Custom groups, None.
Note this is distinct from #84332, which covers ordering of the Projects list. This report is about ordering of chats within a project.
What Should Happen?
Chats within a project should be ordered most-recent-activity-first, as they were before 11 Aug 2026, so recently used chats appear at the top without needing View all → Show more or search.
Error Messages/Logs
Steps to Reproduce
- Open the Claude desktop app on macOS with a project containing many chats.
- Send a message in a chat currently low in that project's list and receive a reply.
- Look at the project's chat list in the sidebar — the chat does not move to the top.
- Click "View all" — still not visible.
- Click "Show more" and scroll — it appears below chats last used weeks or months earlier.
Claude Model
None
Is this a regression?
Yes, this worked in a previous version
Last Working Version
The build before the 11 Aug 2026 update
Claude Code Version
Claude 1.30096.5 (6e1346) 2026-08-14T21:58:49.000Z
Platform
Anthropic API
Operating System
macOS
Terminal/Shell
Terminal.app (macOS)
Additional Information
Started around 11 Aug 2026 after an update; several updates since have not fixed it. Restarting the app does not help.
Part of a cluster of sorting defects: #84332 (Projects list ignores chat activity, reproduces on web), #56060, #78236, #81884, #84526. Closed predecessor: #59282, auto-closed as stale rather than resolved.
<img width="775" height="1145" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/23d5b3ad-85f5-4990-9fe1-8d8cc4d1d5bc" />
3 Comments
Labelled
invalid— I think this is mis-triage. This is a Claude desktop app (macOS) bug, which is in scope for this repo: #59282 was labelledarea:desktop+platform:macosby the same automation, and #84332, #78236 and #83937 are all desktop reports.The version field reads oddly because the bug report template asks for a Claude Code CLI version. The value given (Claude 1.30096.5, 6e1346, built 2026-08-14) is the desktop app build, which is the relevant one here.
Could this be relabelled
bug/area:desktop/platform:macos?Minimal reproduction — this is not scale-dependent and reproduces in a brand-new project:
Result: the order stays 3, 2, 1 — newest-created first. "Test chat 1" does not move despite being the only chat with recent activity.
This identifies the sort key: chats are ordered by CREATION time, not activity. That matches the root cause proposed in #84332 — an activity timestamp that is never written, so the sort falls back to created_at.
It also explains why this is under-reported: for chats created and used once, creation order and activity order coincide, so the list looks correct. The two only diverge when you return to an older chat.
<img width="263" height="147" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/281cb4f6-f818-4b3a-a510-3bce3e0c5aed" />
I can confirm this is still happening on Windows in Claude Desktop 1.40609.0 (f65e38), built 2026-08-27.
For someone like me, with hundreds of conversations spread across dozens of Projects, this regression is absolutely brutal.
Previously, the behavior was obvious and useful: I could reopen a conversation from weeks or months ago, continue working in it, and it would immediately move back to the top because it was now the most recently active conversation.
Now I can spend an hour actively working inside an old thread, leave it, and Claude happily puts me back into a Project where that conversation is still buried somewhere among dozens of older threads. I then have to remember where it originally lived and hunt for a conversation I was literally using seconds ago.
With 5 or 10 conversations this might look like a small UX annoyance. With hundreds of conversations across dozens of long-running Projects, it becomes genuinely infuriating and materially damages the usefulness of Projects as an organizational tool.
What makes this particularly surreal is that there is not even an alternative sorting option.
If Anthropic really wants to change the default ordering, then at the absolute minimum give us:
And let the user choose.
But removing the standard “most recently active first” behavior while simultaneously providing no sorting controls at all is an astonishing product decision.
These are conversations, not archived files. If I interact with a thread today, it is an active thread today, regardless of whether I originally created it three months ago.
Virtually every mature conversation-based product understands this. Email, Slack, Teams, messaging applications, ticket systems and forums all surface a thread again when new activity occurs. There is a reason this interaction pattern has existed for decades: it matches how humans actually work.
I initially assumed this had to be a bug when I first noticed it around version 1.14271.0. We are now at 1.40609.0 and the behavior is still there, which increasingly makes it look like an intentional design change.
If that is the case, I genuinely think this is one of the worst UX regressions Claude Desktop has introduced.
Please restore sorting by most recent activity. And independently of that, please add proper sorting controls to Projects so users with large amounts of real work inside Claude are not completely dependent on whatever single ordering algorithm Anthropic decides to impose on everyone.