Fresh install: desktop app sidebar shows no session history despite intact ~/.claude/projects data
Environment
- OS: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
- Claude Code desktop app (AnthropicClaude), version 1.32352.1
- Claude Code CLI version: 2.1.229
- Install method: native
What happened
The desktop app was (re)installed today (Squirrel --createShortcut log timestamped 2026-08-18 13:10:59 local, Local State installation_date2 = 1787073007). This created a fresh Electron profile under %APPDATA%\Claude. After this install, the app's session/history sidebar shows zero sessions.
Data is intact — this is a read/render bug, not data loss
C:\Users\<user>\.claude\projects\ still contains 236 valid session transcripts (*.jsonl) across 26 project directories, with timestamps spanning 2026-06-23 through 2026-08-18 (today). All files parse cleanly and contain full conversation history.
I confirmed there is no separate cache, index, or database file anywhere under ~/.claude that the sidebar could be reading instead (checked for *.db, *.sqlite*, *index*, and listed the full directory tree) — so the sidebar's data source appears to be ~/.claude/projects directly, and it simply isn't picking up pre-existing sessions on a fresh install/profile.
Repro steps
- Have an existing
~/.claude/projectsdirectory with session history (e.g. from prior CLI or desktop usage). - Fresh-install (or reinstall) the Claude desktop app, creating a new Electron
userDataprofile. - Open the app. Sidebar shows no sessions.
- Fully quit (via tray icon) and relaunch. Sidebar still shows no sessions.
Expected: On startup, the sidebar should enumerate and display existing sessions found under ~/.claude/projects, regardless of whether the app's own Electron profile is new.
Actual: Sidebar is empty; a full app restart does not fix it.
Showing cached comments. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗
3 Comments
Additional context from the user: the reinstall happened because auto-update was broken/not completing — they had to manually reinstall to get back on a working version. So the trigger here isn't an unusual manual reinstall, it's the normal recovery path when auto-update stalls, which makes this more likely to hit other users who go through the same recovery.
Root cause narrowed down further. Exactly one session (the one I'm running as) shows in the sidebar after the reinstall — every other pre-existing session is invisible. Checked file mtimes on the session transcripts vs. the reinstall timestamp (2026-08-18 13:10:07 local):
.jsonlhas an mtime after the reinstall (it's actively being appended to right now, as the live conversation)..jsonl— checked several across multiple projects — has an mtime before the reinstall, matching whenever that conversation last had activity (ranging from minutes to weeks prior).Pattern is 100% consistent: the only sessions visible are the ones with a write event after the new Electron profile came up. This strongly suggests the sidebar is populated by a live filesystem watcher on
~/.claude/projectsthat starts fresh with the app profile, with no initial scan/backfill of existing session files at startup. It only learns about a session the moment something is appended to its transcript — pre-existing sessions are never looked at, not merely mis-read.If accurate, the fix is: on startup, do a one-time scan of
~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonlto seed the sidebar's session list, in addition to (or feeding into) the live watcher for new activity.Ah, originally had windows store MSIX ... when auto-update failed, I downloaded installer direct from website to reinstall. This is the problem, no doubt, though why, I don't know, I would have thought they both read the same local session data.