OpenAI/ChatGPT Codex Desktop App Update V26.831.21537 Sep 1, 2026 - Wiped Projects

ChatGPT Bugs
,
1

This is what I have observed from the latest update that was pushed to my computer today. The app state exposed:

  • After a desktop update to V26.831.21537 / “Agent Mode now Available” install event, the Codex desktop UI no longer shows local Codex projects.
  • Your local Codex tasks still appear under “Recents”.
  • There is a maximum of 50 recents. Considering that your projects may have hundreds of threads between them, this means work history is gone. I am unable to access my work.
  • My active task are exposed as detached from any project, with projectId: null.
  • That breaks all project-scoped organization/guardrail model that are relied on.
  • It materially disrupts the ability to work safely on your apps because unrelated tasks and project contexts are co-mingled.
  • I do not yet know whether the original project records were deleted, hidden, failed to migrate, failed to index, or are inaccessible through the current UI/API within the .sql databases on the local machine.

Attempting to do development by anyone affected by this runs the risk of your projects returning results that are unexpected since anything you edit no longer is organized by your projects. Concepts, threads, tasks from unrelated projects may now co-mingle.

OpenAI has yet to release any statement about this update today.

I am using Windows…

All of my projects and work are at a stand still until this is addressed.

I do not think any of us should have to do anything to fix this. It is entirely on Open AI.

Official OpenAI documentation says: “The ChatGPT desktop app normally checks for and installs updates on its own.” For managed organizations, admins can disable the built-in updater and deploy approved versions through device management instead.

For the normal consumer/local desktop app, I do not see an official user-facing setting that says “turn off automatic app updates.” There is a setting called automatic updates under Settings > Import, but that is for keeping imported work from tools like Claude/Cursor in sync, not for disabling ChatGPT/Codex app updates.

For a normal consumer app, automatic updates are common (think Chrome). For a system like this (I have been using it for development on a project for more than six-months), an active software workspace where project organization and guardrails matter, an unapproved desktop update changing Codex behavior is not a small annoyance. It can break the trust chain around:

  • project membership;
  • project instructions;
  • task isolation;
  • source-folder guardrails;
  • agent behavior;
  • local task indexing;
  • and build provenance.

This as a major incident!

2

I’m seeing a serious organization/state issue in the Codex desktop app after a recent update. Projects that previously existed and were used for ongoing development work no longer appear under the Codex “Projects” section, while individual recent tasks still appear under Recents.

The problem is not simply that work is missing from the sidebar. The larger concern is that tasks which were part of a long-running app development workflow now appear detached from their original project context. In every case, the active task appears to be treated as a loose/local task rather than being associated with the expected project.

This creates a high-risk situation for software development because it becomes unclear:

  • which project a task belongs to;
  • which source folder or worktree is authoritative;
  • whether multiple tasks/agents are working from the same codebase;
  • whether recent builds came from the correct source;
  • and whether project-level history, context, and organization are still intact.

The visible symptom is: Codex shows “No projects” under the Projects section, but still shows prior work under Recents.

The practical impact is severe for long-running development projects: project organization, task continuity, and source-code confidence can break down even if the underlying files still exist on disk. Threads in a project are contextual and isolated from other projects until today. now every thread is loose and “uncontained”. This is brought development to a standstill awaiting resolution from OpenAI / ChatGPT.

There is no simple corrective action that I can see as a path forward unless OpenAI/ChatGPT fix it. There is real risk of loss of data and the real risk of substantial financial harm as a result.

The safest next step is read-only reconciliation: verify project records, task IDs, workspace folders, installed app build source, and whether the desktop app’s project/task index changed or became corrupted after the update. No code edits or build installs should happen until the project association problem is understood.

Because of the seriousness of this “Disaster” I have sent Open AI/ ChatGPT at formal dispute according to the terms of service. Not to pick a fight but because customers who pay them to use the platform and have invested substantial time and resources, including financial outlay have real risk of financial issues and loss due to lost productivity and or lost ability to work and preserve data.

if you have experienced this issue too, I suggest that you notify OpenAI/Chat GPT of a formal 60 day legal dispute as I have to get their attention. This starts the clock for your ability to seek legal remuneration through real legal means if they do not correct it within the 60 days.

that said if it takes 60 days for recovery, there will be real financial harm and fallout and I would surmise that many of you will be in the same situation as I am.

Summary of Dispute

On or immediately following the release of ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, the Codex portion of my ChatGPT desktop application suffered what appears to be a severe loss or corruption of project organization and project-to-thread associations.

I have used Codex Desktop extensively for software development and maintained multiple separate Codex Projects, including a substantial long-running development project called Aviator EFB. These Projects were not merely cosmetic folders. They were used to segregate and organize large bodies of development work into their appropriate project contexts, allowing individual Codex development threads to remain associated with the project in which the work was performed.

After the update, all of my Codex Projects disappeared. When I switch the application to Codex, the Projects section now explicitly displays “No projects.” At the same time, many of the individual development threads that previously belonged to those Projects continue to exist, but they have been flattened into a single undifferentiated Recents list.

This has intermixed hundreds of development threads originating from different and unrelated projects and has destroyed or made inaccessible the project organization upon which my development workflow depended. In the case of Aviator EFB, this represents many months of extensive software-development work.

This is not the same as simply losing convenient folders or sidebar organization. The project structure provided important contextual separation between independent software-development efforts. Until it is determined whether the underlying project associations, repository/workspace relationships, instructions, context, and other project-specific state remain intact, continuing development through the affected Codex application presents an unacceptable risk of working within an incorrect or incomplete project context and potentially causing additional damage to active software-development work.

Importantly, the ChatGPT-side Projects remain visible when I switch the same desktop application back to ChatGPT. The failure is specifically observable on the Codex side, where all Codex Projects have disappeared while many of their constituent development threads remain visible in Recents. I have screenshots documenting this condition as well as the application version and release date.

I am therefore requesting that OpenAI:

1. Immediately preserve all server-side and account-side records relating to my Codex Projects, tasks/threads, project memberships, project-to-thread associations, workspace/repository associations, synchronization records, account state, relevant logs and telemetry, and any records showing migrations or modifications associated with version 26.831.21537.

2. Investigate and restore my original Codex Projects and their original thread/project associations, rather than requiring me to manually recreate project structures from hundreds of intermixed conversations.

3. Confirm whether any project records, project metadata, conversation associations, instructions, workspace/repository associations, or other project-specific state were deleted, modified, migrated, corrupted, or rendered inaccessible by the September 1 release.

4. Confirm that OpenAI will preserve the affected data and relevant logs while this dispute and technical investigation remain pending, including records that might otherwise be subject to routine retention, rotation, or deletion.

5. Escalate this matter to the appropriate Codex/Desktop engineering team because this appears to involve application state, project indexing, synchronization, or migration rather than an ordinary user-interface support issue.

6. Provide a case/reference number and substantive written response explaining what occurred and what steps OpenAI will take to restore the affected project structure.

I am submitting this notice to initiate the informal dispute-resolution process provided by OpenAI’s Terms of Use. My immediate preference is resolution through complete restoration of my Codex Projects, project memberships, and associated project state without further loss or alteration of my development work.

I expressly request preservation of potentially relevant records while OpenAI investigates this issue, and I reserve all rights and remedies available to me under the applicable agreement and law.

URGENT DATA LOSS / PRESERVATION DEMAND — ChatGPT Desktop 26.831.21537 has caused harm.

Following installation/update to ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, my existing Projects disappeared from the application. Conversations associated with those Projects remain visible in Recents.

I am demanding immediate escalation to engineering and preservation of all account, project, conversation, synchronization, database, telemetry, server-side project-association, and related records associated with my account. Please do not delete, purge, overwrite, or alter records relevant to the missing Projects while this issue is investigated.

Please provide a support case number and confirm that this matter has been escalated.

Furthermore, this has affected my project development on multiple projects. I have become dependent on ChatGPT for the project and have input thousands of dollars in tokens and over 7 months of development. Tonight I am stuck trying to figure out how to proceed because my projects exist on the ChatGPT side but Codex side is destroyed. Nothing is organized nor in the order by which I was working on various projects.

This is a serious legal matter.

3

My Desktop App was updated today Version 26.831.21537, Released Sep 1, 2026.

My Entire Codex Desktop Project structure was wiped out. All of the threads are still in recent but this is not useable.

  1. Contextual threads are gated by project. Without those gates threads have no context to continue working. they can get context from every thread in the app. This is really bad!
  2. I am 7 months into several development projects and I am now at a 100% STANDSTILL until this is fixed.
  3. I have sent ChatGPT/Open AI the 60 Day Dispute Notice to Fix this per the terms of service.

This is a disaster of epic proportions. It is not my responsibility to figure it out. It is 100% your responsibility to maintain data integrity. I am sitting here freaking out and unable to work to meet deadlines…

4

This is an epic level disaster. All Codex Desktop Projects are wiped. Project Guardrails for threads are all gone. Any development work you do now will use threads out of context. Project Development is stopped until this is fixed. I invoked the 60 day Dispute Resolution in the Terms of Service moments ago and sent an email to my attorney.

5

I’m seeing a serious organization/state issue in the Codex desktop app after a recent update. Projects that previously existed and were used for ongoing development work no longer appear under the Codex “Projects” section, while individual recent tasks still appear under Recents.

The problem is not simply that work is missing from the sidebar. The larger concern is that tasks which were part of a long-running app development workflow now appear detached from their original project context. In every case, the active task appears to be treated as a loose/local task rather than being associated with the expected project.

This creates a high-risk situation for software development because it becomes unclear:

  • which project a task belongs to;
  • which source folder or worktree is authoritative;
  • whether multiple tasks/agents are working from the same codebase;
  • whether recent builds came from the correct source;
  • and whether project-level history, context, and organization are still intact.

The visible symptom is: Codex shows “No projects” under the Projects section, but still shows prior work under Recents.

The practical impact is severe for long-running development projects: project organization, task continuity, and source-code confidence can break down even if the underlying files still exist on disk. Threads in a project are contextual and isolated from other projects until today. now every thread is loose and “uncontained”. This is brought development to a standstill awaiting resolution from OpenAI / ChatGPT.

There is no simple corrective action that I can see as a path forward unless OpenAI/ChatGPT fix it. There is real risk of loss of data and the real risk of substantial financial harm as a result.

The safest next step is read-only reconciliation: verify project records, task IDs, workspace folders, installed app build source, and whether the desktop app’s project/task index changed or became corrupted after the update. No code edits or build installs should happen until the project association problem is understood.

Because of the seriousness of this “Disaster” I have sent Open AI/ ChatGPT at formal dispute according to the terms of service. Not to pick a fight but because customers who pay them to use the platform and have invested substantial time and resources, including financial outlay have real risk of financial issues and loss due to lost productivity and or lost ability to work and preserve data.

if you have experienced this issue too, I suggest that you notify OpenAI/Chat GPT of a formal 60 day legal dispute as I have to get their attention. This starts the clock for your ability to seek legal remuneration through real legal means if they do not correct it within the 60 days.

that said if it takes 60 days for recovery, there will be real financial harm and fallout and I would surmise that many of you will be in the same situation as I am.

Summary of Dispute

On or immediately following the release of ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, the Codex portion of my ChatGPT desktop application suffered what appears to be a severe loss or corruption of project organization and project-to-thread associations.

I have used Codex Desktop extensively for software development and maintained multiple separate Codex Projects, including a substantial long-running development project called Aviator EFB. These Projects were not merely cosmetic folders. They were used to segregate and organize large bodies of development work into their appropriate project contexts, allowing individual Codex development threads to remain associated with the project in which the work was performed.

After the update, all of my Codex Projects disappeared. When I switch the application to Codex, the Projects section now explicitly displays “No projects.” At the same time, many of the individual development threads that previously belonged to those Projects continue to exist, but they have been flattened into a single undifferentiated Recents list.

This has intermixed hundreds of development threads originating from different and unrelated projects and has destroyed or made inaccessible the project organization upon which my development workflow depended. In the case of Aviator EFB, this represents many months of extensive software-development work.

This is not the same as simply losing convenient folders or sidebar organization. The project structure provided important contextual separation between independent software-development efforts. Until it is determined whether the underlying project associations, repository/workspace relationships, instructions, context, and other project-specific state remain intact, continuing development through the affected Codex application presents an unacceptable risk of working within an incorrect or incomplete project context and potentially causing additional damage to active software-development work.

Importantly, the ChatGPT-side Projects remain visible when I switch the same desktop application back to ChatGPT. The failure is specifically observable on the Codex side, where all Codex Projects have disappeared while many of their constituent development threads remain visible in Recents. I have screenshots documenting this condition as well as the application version and release date.

I am therefore requesting that OpenAI:

1. Immediately preserve all server-side and account-side records relating to my Codex Projects, tasks/threads, project memberships, project-to-thread associations, workspace/repository associations, synchronization records, account state, relevant logs and telemetry, and any records showing migrations or modifications associated with version 26.831.21537.

2. Investigate and restore my original Codex Projects and their original thread/project associations, rather than requiring me to manually recreate project structures from hundreds of intermixed conversations.

3. Confirm whether any project records, project metadata, conversation associations, instructions, workspace/repository associations, or other project-specific state were deleted, modified, migrated, corrupted, or rendered inaccessible by the September 1 release.

4. Confirm that OpenAI will preserve the affected data and relevant logs while this dispute and technical investigation remain pending, including records that might otherwise be subject to routine retention, rotation, or deletion.

5. Escalate this matter to the appropriate Codex/Desktop engineering team because this appears to involve application state, project indexing, synchronization, or migration rather than an ordinary user-interface support issue.

6. Provide a case/reference number and substantive written response explaining what occurred and what steps OpenAI will take to restore the affected project structure.

I am submitting this notice to initiate the informal dispute-resolution process provided by OpenAI’s Terms of Use. My immediate preference is resolution through complete restoration of my Codex Projects, project memberships, and associated project state without further loss or alteration of my development work.

I expressly request preservation of potentially relevant records while OpenAI investigates this issue, and I reserve all rights and remedies available to me under the applicable agreement and law.

URGENT DATA LOSS / PRESERVATION DEMAND — ChatGPT Desktop 26.831.21537 has caused harm.

Following installation/update to ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, my existing Projects disappeared from the application. Conversations associated with those Projects remain visible in Recents.

I am demanding immediate escalation to engineering and preservation of all account, project, conversation, synchronization, database, telemetry, server-side project-association, and related records associated with my account. Please do not delete, purge, overwrite, or alter records relevant to the missing Projects while this issue is investigated.

Please provide a support case number and confirm that this matter has been escalated.

Furthermore, this has affected my project development on multiple projects. I have become dependent on ChatGPT for the project and have input thousands of dollars in tokens and over 7 months of development. Tonight I am stuck trying to figure out how to proceed because my projects exist on the ChatGPT side but Codex side is destroyed. Nothing is organized nor in the order by which I was working on various projects.

This is a serious legal matter.

6

When productivity and software development tools shift to a forced, automatic-update model, they stop treating your machine as a stable environment.

  • The Risk Factor: Developers spend months curating environments, project states, and fine-tuning contexts. A sudden, unannounced update can completely disrupt that delicate workflow.
  • No Rollback Option: By blocking us from disabling automatic updates on the consumer side, the platform strips away our control, leaving us completely vulnerable to breaking changes or regressions introduced by your engineers.
  • The Consequences: When an update goes wrong, it doesn’t just feel like a minor app bug—it feels like an existential threat to your time, money, and intellectual property.

Developer Backlash

I am not alone in this realization. Since OpenAI merged Codex into the main ChatGPT desktop app, community forums and GitHub repositories have been flooded with complaints. The primary grievance is that forced, poorly communicated updates are breaking local configuration files (config.toml) and temporarily blocking users from accessing their own local project contexts.

Because we rely on the app as a critical engineering tool, treating it like a standard consumer application like chrome with forced background updates creates a severe mismatch in user trust and workflow security.

Todays Update is a prime example of the breach of trust being experienced by potentially a million users right now. All of my projects are gone and only 50 threads show in recents.

If you rely on this app for income or have invested in it significantly, relying on it for your “big deal” project and are literally hitting a brick wall tonight, I urge you not to continue development till OpenAI fixes this. All of the contextual guardrails in your projects are now broken and much of the content in your projects threads are missing.

7

Hi @Bcn0209,

Codex projects are stored locally on the device, not in the cloud. If the actual project files have not been deleted, they can still be added back to the sidebar as projects. The default location is the OS documents folder.

I am pointing this out because the earlier posts never mentioned that the actual projects were deleted, only that the links to the Codex projects disappeared from the app. Admittedly, that is very annoying.

If you need to roll back to an earlier release, you can find previous versions in the official Codex repo: Release 0.152.0 · openai/codex · GitHub

I hope this helps!

8

I’m seeing a serious organization/state issue in the Codex desktop app after a recent update. Projects that previously existed and were used for ongoing development work no longer appear under the Codex “Projects” section, while individual recent tasks still appear under Recents.

The problem is not simply that work is missing from the sidebar. The larger concern is that tasks which were part of a long-running app development workflow now appear detached from their original project context. In every case, the active task appears to be treated as a loose/local task rather than being associated with the expected project.

This creates a high-risk situation for software development because it becomes unclear:

  • which project a task belongs to;
  • which source folder or worktree is authoritative;
  • whether multiple tasks/agents are working from the same codebase;
  • whether recent builds came from the correct source;
  • and whether project-level history, context, and organization are still intact.

The visible symptom is: Codex shows “No projects” under the Projects section, but still shows prior work under Recents.

The practical impact is severe for long-running development projects: project organization, task continuity, and source-code confidence can break down even if the underlying files still exist on disk. Threads in a project are contextual and isolated from other projects until today. now every thread is loose and “uncontained”. This is brought development to a standstill awaiting resolution from OpenAI / ChatGPT.

There is no simple corrective action that I can see as a path forward unless OpenAI/ChatGPT fix it. There is real risk of loss of data and the real risk of substantial financial harm as a result.

The safest next step is read-only reconciliation: verify project records, task IDs, workspace folders, installed app build source, and whether the desktop app’s project/task index changed or became corrupted after the update. No code edits or build installs should happen until the project association problem is understood.

Because of the seriousness of this “Disaster” I have sent Open AI/ ChatGPT at formal dispute according to the terms of service. Not to pick a fight but because customers who pay them to use the platform and have invested substantial time and resources, including financial outlay have real risk of financial issues and loss due to lost productivity and or lost ability to work and preserve data.

if you have experienced this issue too, I suggest that you notify OpenAI/Chat GPT of a formal 60 day legal dispute as I have to get their attention. This starts the clock for your ability to seek legal remuneration through real legal means if they do not correct it within the 60 days.

that said if it takes 60 days for recovery, there will be real financial harm and fallout and I would surmise that many of you will be in the same situation as I am.

Summary of Dispute

On or immediately following the release of ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, the Codex portion of my ChatGPT desktop application suffered what appears to be a severe loss or corruption of project organization and project-to-thread associations.

I have used Codex Desktop extensively for software development and maintained multiple separate Codex Projects, including a substantial long-running development project called Aviator EFB. These Projects were not merely cosmetic folders. They were used to segregate and organize large bodies of development work into their appropriate project contexts, allowing individual Codex development threads to remain associated with the project in which the work was performed.

After the update, all of my Codex Projects disappeared. When I switch the application to Codex, the Projects section now explicitly displays “No projects.” At the same time, many of the individual development threads that previously belonged to those Projects continue to exist, but they have been flattened into a single undifferentiated Recents list.

This has intermixed hundreds of development threads originating from different and unrelated projects and has destroyed or made inaccessible the project organization upon which my development workflow depended. In the case of Aviator EFB, this represents many months of extensive software-development work.

This is not the same as simply losing convenient folders or sidebar organization. The project structure provided important contextual separation between independent software-development efforts. Until it is determined whether the underlying project associations, repository/workspace relationships, instructions, context, and other project-specific state remain intact, continuing development through the affected Codex application presents an unacceptable risk of working within an incorrect or incomplete project context and potentially causing additional damage to active software-development work.

Importantly, the ChatGPT-side Projects remain visible when I switch the same desktop application back to ChatGPT. The failure is specifically observable on the Codex side, where all Codex Projects have disappeared while many of their constituent development threads remain visible in Recents. I have screenshots documenting this condition as well as the application version and release date.

I am therefore requesting that OpenAI:

1. Immediately preserve all server-side and account-side records relating to my Codex Projects, tasks/threads, project memberships, project-to-thread associations, workspace/repository associations, synchronization records, account state, relevant logs and telemetry, and any records showing migrations or modifications associated with version 26.831.21537.

2. Investigate and restore my original Codex Projects and their original thread/project associations, rather than requiring me to manually recreate project structures from hundreds of intermixed conversations.

3. Confirm whether any project records, project metadata, conversation associations, instructions, workspace/repository associations, or other project-specific state were deleted, modified, migrated, corrupted, or rendered inaccessible by the September 1 release.

4. Confirm that OpenAI will preserve the affected data and relevant logs while this dispute and technical investigation remain pending, including records that might otherwise be subject to routine retention, rotation, or deletion.

5. Escalate this matter to the appropriate Codex/Desktop engineering team because this appears to involve application state, project indexing, synchronization, or migration rather than an ordinary user-interface support issue.

6. Provide a case/reference number and substantive written response explaining what occurred and what steps OpenAI will take to restore the affected project structure.

I am submitting this notice to initiate the informal dispute-resolution process provided by OpenAI’s Terms of Use. My immediate preference is resolution through complete restoration of my Codex Projects, project memberships, and associated project state without further loss or alteration of my development work.

I expressly request preservation of potentially relevant records while OpenAI investigates this issue, and I reserve all rights and remedies available to me under the applicable agreement and law.

URGENT DATA LOSS / PRESERVATION DEMAND — ChatGPT Desktop 26.831.21537 has caused harm.

Following installation/update to ChatGPT Desktop version 26.831.21537, released September 1, 2026, my existing Projects disappeared from the application. Conversations associated with those Projects remain visible in Recents.

I am demanding immediate escalation to engineering and preservation of all account, project, conversation, synchronization, database, telemetry, server-side project-association, and related records associated with my account. Please do not delete, purge, overwrite, or alter records relevant to the missing Projects while this issue is investigated.

Please provide a support case number and confirm that this matter has been escalated.

Furthermore, this has affected my project development on multiple projects. I have become dependent on ChatGPT for the project and have input thousands of dollars in tokens and over 7 months of development. Tonight I am stuck trying to figure out how to proceed because my projects exist on the ChatGPT side but Codex side is destroyed. Nothing is organized nor in the order by which I was working on various projects.

9

this is an epic level disaster! So bad that I invoked the 60 day Dispute Resolution notice under the terms of service and emailed my attorney. I am sitting here wondering if all of my projects “contextual” guardrails for the threads in each project are broken right now and I dare not continue development until this disaster is fixed. I am concerned that I may miss deadlines, lose money now and even run the risk of data loss. These projects were/are “supposedly” on my local machine yet ChatGPT was able to destroy them or prevent them from being synced or something.

This proves that there is a flaw in the code. If all of our desktop computers lost their projects completely and they are unrecoverable - I suspect ChatGPT may be insolvent in the next year… I cannot imagine how many people use Codex Desktop and are experiencing this issue right now!!!

10

It does help. It prevents my anger from getting my attorney involved. It does not help recover the lost time and delays. This is a serious matter and ChatGPT needs to own ensuring that their auto updates do not cause this sort of issues. Think about how many users are experiencing this.

I learned that it is not possible to disable auto updates yesterday. That is a preposterous situation to deal with.

11

Why do I as a PAYING CUSTOMER have to fix my local work when OPENAI fuXXed it up?Regardless of where the work is stored, OpenAI pushed an Update in a system that I cannot disable auto updates on and messed up my work organization! In what world is that my fault???

12

Hi there!

The same thing happened to me. I solved it simply. I started a new chat and explained that, after the update, the project folder for the GPT Codex app (not the classic version) had disappeared. It found that the file had become corrupted. I asked the app itself to fix it, and it did.

Give that a try; I think it will work.