[FEATURE] See sessions across the Claude accounts I own on one machine
Feature request: see sessions across the Claude accounts I own on one machine
Product: Claude Desktop (Claude Code desktop app)
Platform: Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, x64
Filed: 2026-08-27
The workflow this is about
I run five Claude accounts on one machine, against one repository. Each is isolated
with a launcher that sets two things:
$env:CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR = 'C:\Users\<user>\.claude-account-N' # Claude Code config + transcripts
--user-data-dir=C:\Users\<user>\.claude-desktop-N # Electron profile + app sign-inThat part works well and I am not asking to change it.
The reason for several accounts is usage limits. When one account reaches its weekly
limit, I move the work to another account and carry on. The work itself is a set of
long-running sessions on one codebase, so continuity across that switch is the whole
point.
The problem
Each account's session sidebar shows only that account's own sessions. After a switch
I cannot see, search, or open anything the previous account was doing, even though it
is the same machine, the same user, and the same repository.
So the sessions I most need at the moment of a switch are the ones that become
invisible at exactly that moment.
What I verified before filing
I first assumed the sidebar was backed by the per-profile directory<user-data-dir>\claude-code-sessions\, and that sharing that directory between
accounts would give a unified list. That is wrong, and I would rather record the
measurement than let someone else repeat it.
I searched every local session store on the machine (six stores, 425 records) for
titles that were visibly rendering in one account's sidebar:
| Title rendering in the sidebar | Present in any local store? |
|---|---|
| (4 titles) | yes |
| (4 other titles) | no, not in any of the six |
Four cards render with no local record behind them anywhere on disk. I also copied a
session record from account 1 into account 5's store, along with its .jsonl
transcript, and the card never appeared.
Conclusion: the sidebar is the account's server-side session list. The localclaude-code-sessions files are a cache, not the source. No local configuration can
produce a cross-account view.
The grouping headers agree. One account's sidebar groups sessions under labels likeMessageFoundry - <org>, which is a server-side workspace grouping rather than a
directory on disk.
What I am asking for
An opt-in way to see sessions from other Claude accounts that the same person owns on
the same machine. Roughly, in order of how useful each would be to me:
- A cross-account view in the sidebar. A toggle or a filter that includes
sessions from the machine's other configured accounts, clearly labelled with which
account each belongs to. Read-only would already be a large improvement.
- Open a session from another account read-only. The transcript is already on
disk under that account's CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR. Being able to read it without
signing out and signing back in would cover most of my need.
- Transfer or hand off a session to another account. This is what I actually do
by hand today, and it is the expensive part. When an account hits its limit I
reconstruct each session under the next account from files the previous sessions
wrote. A supported handoff would remove that work entirely.
Any one of these solves the switch. The first is the smallest.
Why not just use one account
Usage limits. The multi-account setup exists to keep work moving past a weekly cap,
which is a supported way to buy more capacity. The tooling treats each account as a
separate world, so the cost of that capacity is losing continuity at the exact moment
the switch happens.
Related
anthropics/claude-code#90172 covers a different defect in the same area: the desktop
app self-restarts to update, kills the Claude Code CLI child processes, and relaunches
without the launcher's environment, so restarted sessions register into the default
config directory instead of the per-account one. That bug and this request touch the
same multi-account seam from opposite sides. Fixing 90172 does not address this.
Environment
- Claude Desktop 1.37937.3, bundled CLI 2.1.246
- Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200
- Five accounts, isolated by
CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIRplus--user-data-dir - One shared repository and git worktree set
Showing cached comments. Read the full discussion on GitHub ↗
3 Comments
Recording that this is still current and still wanted.
It is the cross-account half of a set that is open individually: #87447 (a session's
CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIRnames one account while it authenticates and bills under another) and #83951 (no supported way to enumerate config roots at all). Attribution, enumeration, and visibility, over the same set of accounts.The workflow behind the request is unchanged: several accounts on one machine, each isolated by config dir and user data dir, against one repository, with no way to see across them.
Still open. The workflow this asks about is not multi-account for its own sake. It is usage limits: when one account reaches its weekly limit I move the work to another and carry on, and the work is a set of long-running sessions on one repository, so continuity across that switch is the entire point.
What actually happens is that each account's sidebar shows only its own sessions. So the sessions I most need to see are the ones that become invisible at exactly the moment I need them, on the same machine, the same user and the same repository.
I recorded a negative result in the report to save someone the same guess. I assumed the sidebar was backed by the per-profile
<user-data-dir>\claude-code-sessions\directory, and that sharing it between accounts would produce a unified list. That is wrong. #92135 and #92137 are the two neighbours: the first is the messaging half of the same split, the second is the reason the split exists at all.A quick workaround is available here. It combines multiple Claude account chats so you can keep all your sessions when switching. Not a perfect solution but works until Anthropic releases this feature.