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harn claude-desktop

harn claude-desktop [accounts|sessions|mirror] [options]

The Claude desktop app scopes its Claude Code session sidebar per signed-in account: sign out of one Claude account and into another (a common move when one account hits its usage limit) and every session the first account created disappears from the sidebar. Nothing is deleted — the transcripts live account-agnostically under ~/.claude/projects/ in the runtime environment, and the sidebar entries themselves are plain JSON files under the desktop app’s data directory:

<dataDir>/claude-code-sessions/<account-uuid>/<env-id>/local_<uuid>.json

Each file is one sidebar entry ({ cliSessionId, title, cwd, model, … }) with no account binding inside it — the account scoping is purely which directory it sits in. harn claude-desktop mirror copies entry files across account directories so each account’s sidebar lists the union. Fully quit and relaunch the desktop app afterward; opening a mirrored session resumes it with full history.

Locating the data directory

Section titled “Locating the data directory”

Auto-discovered per platform: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude (macOS), %APPDATA%\Claude (Windows), ~/.config/Claude (Linux). Under WSL — where the desktop app runs on the Windows side but the CLI runs in the distro — every /mnt/c/Users/<user>/AppData/Roaming/Claude is scanned. Only directories containing a claude-code-sessions/ index count. Override with --data-dir <path> or HARNERY_CLAUDE_DESKTOP_DIR.

Subcommands

Section titled “Subcommands”
Terminal window
harn claude-desktop                # summary: data dir(s) + accounts + CLI account
harn claude-desktop accounts       # account dirs + session counts; labels the CLI's account
harn claude-desktop sessions       # every entry across accounts, newest first
harn claude-desktop sessions --account 6d725f2a   # one account (uuid prefix)
harn claude-desktop sessions --archived           # include archived entries


harn claude-desktop mirror --all                  # dry-run: plan the union copy
harn claude-desktop mirror --all --yes            # apply
harn claude-desktop mirror --session "shopify theme" --yes   # by title substring
harn claude-desktop mirror --session <cli-session-id> --yes  # by exact session id
harn claude-desktop mirror --all --to 6d725f2a --yes         # only INTO one account
harn claude-desktop mirror --all --from e6c7dc4f --yes       # only FROM one account

mirror is dry-run by default — it prints the planned copies and exits; --yes applies them. It is idempotent: entries the target account already lists (matched by cliSessionId, falling back to filename) are skipped, so re-running after every account switch is safe and cheap. Archived entries are skipped unless --include-archived.

Caveats

Section titled “Caveats”
  • The entry-file format is the desktop app’s private state, not a public API. Mirror copies files verbatim (never rewrites them), so a format change degrades to “copies stop being useful”, not corruption — but a future app version could change the layout entirely.
  • After mirroring, both accounts list the same session, backed by one transcript file. Don’t drive the same session from two signed-in accounts at once.
  • The desktop app reads the index at startup: fully quit it (system tray → quit — the window X usually just minimizes) and relaunch to see mirrored sessions.