Where are past chat history - They disappear!

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

I worked on a project in Cursor since a few days. In Agents, I usually see the past chat history and can click on them to review past history. On the same project I only see the latest conversation I do. The older one from this morning or yesterday are gone. That is not really usefull If I cannot go back in these past conversations. Where are they hiding? Is there a setup I should change?

Steps to Reproduce

Any time I open Cursor

Expected Behavior

I should be able to see past chats with agents. The conversations disapear!

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.1.50 (system setup)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 56f0a83df8e9eb48585fcc4858a9440db4cc7770
Date: 2025-12-06T23:39:52.834Z
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.22000

For AI issues: which model did you use?

GPT 5.1 codex max, Opus 4.5, etc.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

Hey, thanks for the report.

Short version:

  • Chat history is stored locally and isn’t synced to the cloud: %APPDATA%\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage
  • After crashes/updates old chats may stop showing. Without a backup, recovery is usually not possible

What to check now:

  1. Make a backup of %APPDATA%\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage
  2. When you click one of the missing chats, open Help > Toggle Developer Tools > Console, take a screenshot of the red errors, and share it here

Useful thread with options and discussion:

I also recommend exporting chats regularly and considering SpecStory for auto‑backups.

Ok so I look into this folder:

C:\Users\photo\AppData\Roaming\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage\7138749222f063000eaa2a77cce728c6

I see 3 files: state.vscdb, state.vscdb.backup, workspace.json

1 directory: anysphere.cursor-retrieval

Where and how to open the history chat?

Thanks

Thanks for the clarification.

The workspace folder is B:\detect-objects-on-camera-modified.

What is strange is that I did not move the project folder path, moved or renamed the project. I am just wondering why I do not see the past chats in the Agent pane. I worked this morning on a long chat and I cannot access it this afternoon. Should I try another software like DB Browser for SQLite to try to load the past chat or something else?

I tried Composer 1 to try to resolve the issue. I am not sure this helps!

Found 9 different chat sessions stored in your workspace database. Each has a unique ID (UUID), indicating multiple conversations are saved.

What I found:

  • Your workspace database contains 9 separate chat sessions

  • There’s a history.entries key that stores conversation history

  • The database was last updated today at 2:16 PM

  • All conversations are stored in: C:\Users\photo\AppData\Roaming\Cursor\User\workspaceStorage\445de121f82f8be72cb449c9dc480877\state.vscdb

Why you might not see all conversations in the UI:

  1. UI display limit — Cursor may only show the most recent conversation or a limited number

  2. Panel state — The chat history panel might need to be expanded or scrolled

  3. View filter — There might be a filter showing only “today” or “recent”

  4. UI bug — The history list may not be loading properly

What to try:

  1. In the chat panel, look for:
  • A scrollbar to scroll through history

  • A dropdown or list of past conversations

  • A “Show all” or “Load more” button

  • Clicking on the chat panel header to expand the history list

  1. Check Cursor settings for chat history display options

  2. Restart Cursor — sometimes the UI needs a refresh to load all stored conversations

The data is there (9 conversations stored), so this appears to be a UI display issue rather than missing data. If you still can’t see them after checking the UI, report this to Cursor support ([email protected]) as a bug where stored conversations aren’t displaying in the history panel.

Thanks for your feedback

Got it. There are 9 chats in the database, but the UI doesn’t show them. This is a known bug.

What to try now:

  1. CTRL+Shift+P > “Developer: Reload Window”
  2. If that doesn’t help, fully restart Cursor

About DB Browser for SQLite: you can open state.vscdb and inspect chat contents in the tables, but this won’t make them appear in the Cursor UI. The data is readable, but you can’t interact with it through the interface.

Temporary workaround: if you need info from the morning chat, extract it via DB Browser and paste it into a new chat. Or wait for the fix from the team - they’re working on it.

For the future: export important chats (three dots > Export Chat) or use SpecStory for auto-backups.

1 Like

I’m having the same issue. Just lost all my conversation from the last 5 days AFTER A SIMPLE RESTART.

What’s going on with Cursor AI? The conversations are THE MAIN feature from my perspective, and this has been a rocky year from this perspective.

The damage to our business (due to loss of conversation text and context) becomes gradually massive (downtime/delays/etc).

PS: the suggestion for the future is not really a reasonable workaround. If files are so critical, maybe they should be moved to be stored inside the project folder (so that our version control covers it as well)?

in any case, we need a reliable solution. this kind of issues repeat (on and off) for at least 4-5 months. For our team, that many losses/downtime is simply crazy. It makes us not trust the whole application (cursor) as a reliable work tool.

2 Likes

i have the same problem! Lost it 3x time in 10 days. I did a backup but i couldnt retrieve it anyway. Its really annoying because for it’s like a to do list, where i left and what to do next. They need to fix this!

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