[Windows] Last updated sorting does not move projects to the top when their chats are updated

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Windows package version: 26.908.4834.0, verified on September 14, 2026 from the executable path of the running desktop app. The version displayed in the About dialog was not separately inspected.

What subscription do you have?

Not specified in this report.

What platform is your computer?

Windows x64 — Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0.

What issue are you seeing?

I use the Codex desktop app with multiple projects and want to keep chats grouped by project while placing the most recently active project at the top.

I cannot get that ordering to work reliably: after working in a chat, its containing project does not move to the top as expected. Sorting chats within an already fixed project order does not satisfy this workflow. I need the project groups themselves to follow the latest activity in their contained chats.

This is an additional Windows user report related to the still-open #31836 and #33077. Please consolidate it with the existing tracking issue if appropriate.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

The workflow to reproduce/check is:

1. Open the Codex desktop app with at least two projects containing chats.
2. Keep the sidebar grouped By project and select Last updated.
3. Pick a project below another project in the list.
4. Send a new message in one of its existing chats, or create and start a new chat in that project.
5. Observe whether the containing project moves above projects whose chats have older activity.

The reported problem is that the project-level ordering does not follow the latest chat activity.

These steps describe the affected workflow and the matching public reports. No independent automated UI reproduction was performed for this submission; only the local package version and OS information above were verified.

What is the expected behavior?

With By project + Last updated:

• Order project groups by the latest relevant chat activity in each project, newest first.
• Recompute the project order when a contained chat is created or updated.
• Keep this behavior when project groups are collapsed.
• Keep chats grouped under their projects.
• Preserve the selected automatic sorting mode across restarts; an existing saved manual order should not override an explicitly selected automatic mode.

For example, if project A was last active yesterday and I send a message in project B now, project B should move above project A automatically.

Additional information

This makes switching between active projects unnecessarily difficult: I have to scan the project list to find work I just continued. Pinning projects or repeatedly reordering them manually does not provide automatic sorting by recent activity.

Related reports:

• #31836 — Projects Sort By Last updated only sorts tasks within project groups, not projects.
• #33077 — Project sorting controls do not change the sidebar project order.
• OpenAI Developer Community: Projects are not sorted by the selected Last updated sorting setting. The August 27 report describes the same project-group behavior; OpenAI Support replied on September 9 that there was no confirmed fix or timeline.

The historical behavior and possible internal causes discussed in those reports have not been independently verified on this Windows build.

No source files or tests are named. Start by reproducing the workflow in the Windows desktop app with By project and Last updated selected, then trace the sidebar project-ordering entry point and its saved sorting state. Done means project groups reorder by the newest contained chat activity, including collapsed groups, and the selected automatic mode persists across restarts.