Hi JW,
This is a known issue that can happen after updating. Your chat data is almost certainly still saved on disk – it’s just not showing up in the sidebar.
Chat transcripts are stored locally at ~/.cursor/projects/{workspace-slug}/agent-transcripts/. To check if your data is still there, open a terminal and run:
ls ~/.cursor/projects/
You should see folders for your workspaces. Inside each, there should be an agent-transcripts/ directory with your chat history files (.jsonl files).
The most common cause after an update is the workspace identity changing slightly, which makes Cursor look in a different directory. A few things to try:
-
Close and reopen your project using File > Open Folder and selecting the exact same folder path you were using before the update
-
Reload the window –
Ctrl+Shift+P> Developer: Reload Window -
If you see multiple similar-looking folders in
~/.cursor/projects/, one of them likely contains your old transcripts – you can compare timestamps to find the right one
You may also find this related thread helpful: No history after update 3.1.17 – same version, same symptom.
Our team is aware of this class of issues and actively working on it. Let me know if the files are there or if you need help recovering them.