claude-code - 💡(How to fix) Fix [BUG] Code tab "Recents" sidebar empty after reinstall despite hundreds of sessions on disk

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

After uninstalling and reinstalling Claude Desktop on Windows, the Code tab's "Recents" sidebar shows no past sessions, even though ~/.claude/projects/ contains hundreds of intact .jsonl session files from prior work.

The app's Overview pane correctly reports the historical totals (270 sessions, 75,817 messages, 17 active days, 18.8M tokens), confirming the app has some awareness that the data exists — but the sidebar does not enumerate any of it. Only sessions newly created post-reinstall appear (in my case, three Dispatch-related sessions unrelated to my actual project work). Toggling the filter from "Active" to "All" reveals the same three plus a couple of archived ones, none of which are my 270 prior sessions.

"New session" → "Select folder" pointed at a known project root does not cause that project's sessions to appear in the sidebar either.

Sessions remain fully reachable via claude --resume from the CLI when run inside the appropriate worktree directory, so this appears to be a desktop UI surfacing issue rather than data loss. For users with substantial history — particularly those whose work is spread across git worktree subdirectories — there is no practical way to browse or resume past sessions from the desktop UI after a reinstall.

What Should Happen?

After reinstalling Claude Desktop, the Code tab's Recents sidebar should enumerate the sessions present on disk in ~/.claude/projects/, either automatically on launch or after the user points "New session" → "Select folder" at the relevant project directory.

At minimum, pointing Select folder at a directory whose encoded path matches an existing folder under ~/.claude/projects/ should cause that directory's sessions to appear in the sidebar.

Error Messages/Logs

No error messages are surfaced in the desktop UI; the sidebar silently shows no past sessions.

For context, the reinstall that produced this state was itself problematic. The prior install left a stale per-package registry hive (`User.dat`, `User.dat.LOG1/2`, `UserClasses.dat`, `UserClasses.dat.LOG1/2`) at `%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc\SystemAppData\Helium\` that no user-mode process held open (verified via Sysinternals Handle and Process Explorer) but that the kernel refused to release. This caused `AddPackage` to fail repeatedly with `HRESULT 0x80073CF6` (`ERROR_INSTALL_REGISTRATION_FAILURE`) until a full reboot.

The relevant tail of `C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\ClaudeSetup.log`:


Installing MSIX: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Temp\Claude-340424588.msix
Extracted family name from MSIX manifest: Claude_pzs8sxrjxfjjc
Standard install (not split-account), using AddPackage
Installing via AddPackage (current-user)...
MSIX installation failed: AddPackage failed: AddPackage failed with HRESULT 0x80073CF6
ERROR dialog (opening log): Installation failed: AddPackage failed: AddPackage failed with HRESULT 0x80073CF6


The reinstall ultimately succeeded after a reboot, but the empty-sidebar state followed. I'm including the install issue in case it shares a root cause around install/state cleanup with the sidebar issue. Full setup log available on request.

Steps to Reproduce

1. On a Windows machine, have a populated ~/.claude/projects/ directory with many sessions across multiple project directories, including sessions inside git worktree subdirectories (e.g. <project>/.claude/worktrees/<name>/). My configuration: ~2,300 files across ~180 project directories, totaling ~8 GB.
2. Uninstall Claude Desktop via Settings → Apps.
3. Download the latest installer from https://claude.ai/download and reinstall. (If you hit HRESULT 0x80073CF6 here, reboot and retry — that's a separate but possibly related issue noted above.)
4. Launch Claude Desktop and open the Code tab.
5. Observe: Recents sidebar is empty (or shows only newly-created post-reinstall sessions). Overview pane correctly shows historical session counts.
6. Click "New session" → "Select folder" and pick a project directory whose sessions exist on disk under ~/.claude/projects/ (the on-disk folder name encodes the path with - replacing \ and -- after the drive letter — e.g. C:\blah2\blah\blah\projects\ComfyUIApp corresponds to C--blah2-blah-blah-projects-ComfyUIApp).
7. Observe: sidebar does not populate with that directory's sessions.
8. Confirm data is intact and reachable via CLI: in Git Bash, cd to the same directory (or one of its worktree subdirectories) and run claude --resume. Sessions list normally and resume normally.

Verification commands (Git Bash):

# Confirm sessions exist on disk
ls ~/.claude/projects/ | wc -l
find ~/.claude/projects/ -name "*.jsonl" | wc -l

# Confirm CLI can list and resume them
cd /c/path/to/some/project/.claude/worktrees/<worktree-name>
claude --resume

Claude Model

Not sure / Multiple models

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

No response

Claude Code Version

2.1.126 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information

No response