Sessions

Settings › Sessions keeps the sidebar short. Choose when finished sessions move to Archived, turn on moving old archived sessions to the TrashRecycle Bin, and see every session you have in one table.

Open it

In Settings, choose Sessions in the list on the left.
Click the ⋯ on the Archived header in the sidebar and choose Manage sessions… (it shows only archived sessions) or Archive settings….
Click the session count at the bottom of the sidebar.
Run Manage sessions or Delete archived sessions… in the command palette (Command, K or Command, Shift, PControl, K or Control, Shift, P). Delete archived sessions… puts the keyboard on the Delete archived sessions switch.

Keep the list short

Archived sessions leave the sidebar but stay on disk. Deleting one moves its transcript to the TrashRecycle Bin, so claude --resume no longer lists it.

Archive finished sessions after

A finished session moves to Archived after this many days without activity: 3 by default, anything from 1 to 365. Working, needs you, unread and pinned sessions stay in the list, and so does a session open in Switchboard. New activity brings a session back, and so does unarchiving it yourself.

The VS Code companion lists the same sessions as the sidebar, so it follows this setting too.

Delete archived sessions

Off by default. When it is on, a session that has been in Archived for longer than the days you set (30 by default, up to 3650) goes to the TrashRecycle Bin. A session counts as archived from the day you archived it, or, when it was archived on its own, from its last activity plus the archive days above.

These are always kept:

pinned sessions;
sessions that are working or need you;
sessions open in another window, such as a terminal or your editor;
sessions with a queued prompt waiting for them, or an unsent message.

Turning the switch on asks first: Turn on deleting after 30 days? says how many sessions go today and how much space that frees. Review the N closes the question and shows exactly those sessions in the table below, so you can unarchive or pin the ones you want to keep. Turn on starts it. Making the days shorter while it is on asks the same way when more sessions would go at once.

Switchboard checks when it starts and once a day while it is open. Each run is written to the log in Settings › Diagnostics: how many sessions moved, how much space that freed, and how many were kept.

Claude Code’s own cleanup

Claude Code deletes old transcripts by itself, even when Switchboard’s deleting is off. It removes sessions that have been quiet for cleanupPeriodDays days (30 when the setting is missing), for every app that uses that Claude profile. The note under the switches says what each Claude profile uses, for example Personal after 30 days, Work after 90 days.

Change… opens one row per profile, with its colour, its name, its settings.json and a days menu ((default) when the setting is missing). A warning shows under a profile when Claude Code would delete its sessions before Switchboard does. Save changes only cleanupPeriodDays in the files you changed, and keeps everything else in them. Nothing is written until you press Save.

All sessions

Under the settings, All sessions lists every session Claude Code has, also those from other apps when the sidebar shows only Switchboard’s. The line under the heading says how many there are, how much space they take, how many are archived, and how many of those have been archived for more than 30 days. Reveal in FinderFile Explorer opens the folder where Claude Code keeps them (with several profiles, pick which).

Find sessions

Filter by title, branch or project: type to narrow the list.
Any time, 7 days, 30 days, Older than 30 days: by last activity.
All projects: one project only.
From any app: where the session started: Switchboard, Terminal, Editor, Claude desktop or Other.
All, In the list, Archived, Pinned: where the session is now.

The table groups sessions by month, newest first. Each row shows the project and title (with the branch and project under it), the status, when it was last active, its size on disk and the app it came from. Click a row, or press ReturnEnter on it, to open the session; Settings closes.

Select and act

Tick a row’s checkbox, or press Space on it. A month’s checkbox selects every session of that month that the filters show; it shows a dash when only some are selected. Pinned and working sessions are dimmed and can’t be selected: hover their checkbox to see why.

The bar at the bottom says how many sessions you selected, their size, and how many would be skipped because they are kept. It has:

Unarchive: puts the archived ones back in the sidebar.
Move to TrashRecycle Bin…: asks first, with how much space it frees, a line per project, and which selected sessions are kept and why. After you confirm, a message says how many moved.
Clear (Escape): selects nothing.

Each row’s ⋯ menu (or a right-click) has Open session, Unarchive or Archive, Pin or Unpin, Reveal transcript in FinderFile Explorer, Copy session ID and Move to TrashRecycle Bin….