openai / openai/codex

[Desktop] Add multi-select and bulk archive, unarchive, and delete for conversations/tasks

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app enhancement session
Dominant language
Rust
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Forks
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Description

What feature would you like to see?

Please add multi-select conversation/task management to the unified ChatGPT/Codex desktop app.

Managing history one thread at a time becomes very tedious for users with many Codex tasks, experiments, temporary chats, and archived conversations.

Requested workflow

Users should be able to select multiple conversations/tasks in Recents, project history, search results, and the Archived view, then perform bulk actions such as:

  • Archive
  • Unarchive / Restore
  • Delete
  • Permanently delete from an archived/trash-like surface where appropriate
  • Optionally move/assign to a project if that model is supported

Example:

☑ task A
☑ task B
☑ task C

[Archive] [Move] [Delete]
UX / safety details
  • Support Shift-click / Cmd-click style selection on desktop, plus visible checkboxes or a Select mode.
  • Show the number of selected threads.
  • Destructive actions should have a clear confirmation step.
  • Bulk operations should report partial failures rather than claiming success if only some items were changed.
  • The UI should remain responsive for tens or hundreds of selected items.
  • Archive and restore should preserve thread identity and project/workspace association.
  • Search/filter results should remain usable as a selection surface.
Why this matters

Codex encourages many short-lived tasks and parallel experiments. Over time, history becomes cluttered much faster than a normal chat product.

The lack of bulk actions makes routine cleanup disproportionately expensive and discourages users from keeping a well-organized task history.

Suggested acceptance criteria
  1. Select multiple tasks/conversations from a history list.
  2. Archive them in one operation.
  3. Select multiple archived tasks and restore them in one operation.
  4. Delete multiple selected tasks with explicit confirmation.
  5. The UI accurately reflects success/failure for every selected item.
  6. The same workflow works in search results and Archived views, not only the default Recents list.

This is intentionally broader than individual bugs where a particular archive/delete button fails: the request is for a coherent multi-select management workflow.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by tracing the Recents, project history, search results, and Archived view entry points to understand how conversations and tasks are currently listed and managed. Compare their existing archive, restore, and delete behavior, then use the six acceptance criteria to verify selection, confirmations, partial-failure reporting, and consistent results across every surface.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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