Clarify tracking for Codex local session deletion, retention, and cleanup UX #28187

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1. github-actions

   added

   enhancementNew feature or requestNew feature or request

   CLIIssues related to the Codex CLIIssues related to the Codex CLI

   sessionIssues involving session (thread) management, resuming, forking, naming, archivingIssues involving session (thread) management, resuming, forking, naming, archiving

   configIssues involving config.toml, config keys, config merging, or config updatesIssues involving config.toml, config keys, config merging, or config updates

   on Jun 14, 2026
2. github-actions commented on Jun 14, 2026

   

   github-actionsbot

   on Jun 14, 2026 – with GitHub Actions

   Contributor

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   Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

   • Archived chats show a Delete button, but deletion does not work #28095
   • Cold start scales badly with large ~/.codex state: 419 MB logs DB + 625 MB sessions cause 1–5 min startup on WSL2 #28166
   • Desktop launch can fail when logs_2.sqlite grows large: app-server SQLite pool times out during startup #27741
   • Feature request: view archived chat contents from Settings #27717
   • 🩹 Restore archived chats access from the main Codex UI #27207

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   👎React with 👎2Reacted by Aesther and Cuimi
3. Aesthermortis commented on Jun 14, 2026

   

   Aesthermortis

   on Jun 14, 2026

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   Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

   • Archived chats show a Delete button, but deletion does not work #28095
   • Cold start scales badly with large ~/.codex state: 419 MB logs DB + 625 MB sessions cause 1–5 min startup on WSL2 #28166
   • Desktop launch can fail when logs_2.sqlite grows large: app-server SQLite pool times out during startup #27741
   • Feature request: view archived chat contents from Settings #27717
   • Restore archived chats access from the main Codex UI #27207

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   Thanks. These are related, but this issue is intentionally about canonical tracking and triage ambiguity, not only the deletion workflow itself.

   If #20230 is the intended canonical tracker, that would be a reasonable outcome. In that case, please link #13018, #20251, #8784, #6015, and this issue there, and clarify that #20230 covers local session deletion/cleanup/retention UX.

   The main concern is that related issues have been closed as duplicates of closed or narrower issues, leaving no clear public tracker for the broader local data hygiene problem.
4. linerking commented on Jul 4, 2026

   

   linerking

   on Jul 4, 2026

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   Adding a current macOS/Codex Desktop data point for why archive is not enough as a local data-management workflow.

   A user asked whether archiving threads prevents local or remote storage from continuing to grow. On the local machine, archive appears to be only a visibility/state change, not a storage cleanup mechanism.

   Observed local ~/.codex sizes on 2026-07-05:

   ~/.codex total:              ~5.0G
   ~/.codex/sessions:           ~2.6G
   ~/.codex/logs_2.sqlite:      ~1.1G
   ~/.codex/generated_images:   ~233M
   ~/.codex/archived_sessions:  ~98M
   sessions + archived_sessions files: 504
   

   This reinforces the user-facing ambiguity:

   • Archive hides a thread, but it does not communicate that local transcript/log/image storage remains.
   • There is no obvious supported way to delete or purge old/archived session data from the app.
   • There is no visible retention policy by age/count/size.
   • Users cannot easily tell which local files are safe to remove without reverse-engineering ~/.codex internals.
   • It is also unclear what, if anything, archive does for remote/cloud-retained state.

   Expected UX would ideally make the distinction explicit:

   1. Archive = hide from normal sidebar/list, keep history and local data.
   2. Delete = remove selected thread/session data, with confirmation and clear scope.
   3. Purge old archived = bulk-delete archived sessions older than N days or over a size/count limit.
   4. Clear diagnostics/logs = manage logs_*.sqlite separately from user transcripts.
   5. Storage view = show local storage usage by category and open the local storage folder.

   Without this, archive can look like cleanup while local data continues growing indefinitely.
5. 38st commented on Aug 31, 2026

   

   38st

   on Aug 31, 2026

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   Adding a measured macOS Codex Desktop case and a concrete storage-manager proposal.

   Observed impact:

   • ~/.codex/sessions reached 22 GiB after several months of regular Desktop use.
   • 1,722 rollout files dated before August 1, 2026 consumed 11.9 GiB.
   • logs_2.sqlite consumed another 1.0 GiB.
   • Removing the old sessions safely required checking pinned, active, and automation-owned threads; deleting rollout files; cleaning the state DB, local thread catalog, summaries, goals, and logs; and vacuuming SQLite.
   • After cleanup, sessions fell to 9.8 GiB, Codex SQLite data fell to 6.7 MiB, and actual free disk increased from 167 GiB to 177 GiB.

   Requested Desktop UX:

   1. Settings > Storage with per-thread and per-category usage.
   2. Sort/filter by size, last activity, project, and archived state.
   3. Bulk select, including delete sessions older than a date.
   4. Preview estimated recovery and explicitly protect active, pinned, and automation-owned threads.
   5. Transactional deletion across rollouts, attachments, logs, summaries, and index records so manual SQLite surgery is never required.
   6. Clearly distinguish Archive from space-reclaiming Delete.
   7. Optional retention by age or storage budget, default-off, with dry run and quarantine/undo.
   8. Disk-pressure warnings before the session store becomes operationally dangerous.

   On APFS, logical file size and physically reclaimable space can differ because of shared/cloned blocks, so the UI should label those measurements separately.

   This overlaps with #6015 for retention and #34337 for unbounded rollout growth, but the missing user-facing storage manager and index-safe deletion path are the core request here.
6. phplego commented on Oct 18, 2026

   

   phplego

   on Oct 18, 2026

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   Please add date/project filters, multi-select, and bulk deletion to quickly clean up old history.

   I'd also like to trim old messages from long threads without deleting the thread—for example, keep the latest 10 MB of a 500 MB thread and discard the obsolete earlier history.