Claude Code Session Viewer: History, Resume and Limits

Claude Code session viewer

Claude Code has a session viewer built in. Run claude --resume, or /resume inside a session, and it opens a picker of your past sessions: each row shows the session's name or first prompt, the time since its last activity, its git branch and its size. Press Space to preview one and Enter to reopen it. Every session is also a transcript on your disk at ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl, kept 30 days by default, and /export writes the current one out as readable text.

"Session" also has a second meaning on Pro and Max: the five-hour session limit, which runs beside a weekly limit. Settings > Usage on claude.ai shows how much of the current session you have used and the time left in it, and /usage shows your plan usage bars inside Claude Code.

You want to	Use	What you see
Browse and reopen past sessions	claude --resume, or /resume inside a session	Name or first prompt, time since last activity, git branch, file size; Space previews a session
Reopen the last session here	claude --continue	The most recent session in the current directory
Reopen a named session	claude --resume <name>	The session you named with claude -n or /rename
Read a session as text	/export	The conversation and tool outputs, copied or saved to a file
Open the raw transcript	~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl	One JSON object per line, in a format Claude Code changes between versions
Size up the current session	/usage, Session block	Tokens by model, estimated cost, API time and wall-clock time
Check the five-hour session limit	Settings > Usage on claude.ai, or /usage	Share of the session limit used, and on claude.ai the time left in it

You want to

Use

What you see

Browse and reopen past sessions

claude --resume, or /resume inside a session

Name or first prompt, time since last activity, git branch, file size; Space previews a session

Reopen the last session here

claude --continue

The most recent session in the current directory

Reopen a named session

claude --resume <name>

The session you named with claude -n or /rename

Read a session as text

/export

The conversation and tool outputs, copied or saved to a file

Open the raw transcript

~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl

One JSON object per line, in a format Claude Code changes between versions

Size up the current session

/usage, Session block

Tokens by model, estimated cost, API time and wall-clock time

Check the five-hour session limit

Settings > Usage on claude.ai, or /usage

Share of the session limit used, and on claude.ai the time left in it

How do I view past Claude Code sessions?

Open the session picker with claude --resume from a terminal, or /resume while a session is running. It lists the sessions of the current repository by default. A session you never named shows its generated title, a short summary of your first prompt. A copy made with /branch gets a row of its own; when the picker finds several entries for one session it groups them, and the right arrow expands the group. These keys do the rest:

Space: Preview the highlighted session
Enter, or 1 to 9: Resume the highlighted session, or the one at that position
/ or any letter: Search; paste a pull request URL to find the session that created it
Ctrl+A: Show sessions from every project on this machine
Ctrl+W: Show sessions from every worktree of this repository
Ctrl+B: Only sessions from the current git branch
Ctrl+R: Rename the highlighted session

The desktop app, claude.ai/code and the VS Code extension each keep their own session list; this picker covers the terminal. The desktop app can open a terminal session too.

Where does Claude Code store sessions?

In ~/.claude/projects/, one folder per working directory and one JSONL file per session. The folder name is the directory's path with every character other than letters and digits turned into a dash, so /Users/you/app becomes -Users-you-app. Each line of a transcript is one JSON object: a message, a tool call or its result, a request sent to the model, or metadata.

Anthropic calls that format internal and changes it between versions, so a script that parses the files can break on any release. To read a session yourself, /export is safer; for a script, claude -p --resume <session-id> --output-format json asks a saved session a question and returns JSON. Transcripts are deleted after 30 days unless you change cleanupPeriodDays in settings.json, and CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR moves them off ~/.claude.

How do I resume a Claude Code session?

claude --continue reopens the most recent session in the current directory.
claude --resume <name> reopens a session by name, ID or transcript path. Name a session with claude -n auth-refactor, /rename, or Ctrl+R in the picker. The generated title works too; the default label such as my-app-3f does not.
claude --from-pr 123 opens the picker filtered to sessions linked to that pull request.
/branch, or --fork-session with --continue or --resume, copies the conversation into a new session and leaves the original as it was. Resuming one session in two terminals without forking mixes both into one transcript.

How long does a Claude Code session last?

A saved conversation has no clock: Claude Code writes it to disk as you work, and you can reopen it until the 30-day sweep removes it. How long the one in front of you has run is in /usage. Its Session block lists the API time and the wall-clock time, the tokens per model and an estimated cost at list price. Those totals start again from zero when /clear opens a new session; the old one stays in the picker.

The usage session is five hours. Pro and Max have a five-hour session limit and a weekly limit, and Team and Enterprise seats reset on a rolling five-hour window and a weekly window. When you reach it, Claude Code says "You've hit your session limit" and shows when the window resets. How the limits work is in Claude Code rate limits explained.

How do I check my current Claude Code session?

Run /usage. On a Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise plan it shows your plan usage bars under the Session block. Settings > Usage on claude.ai shows the current session bar with the time left in it, next to your weekly limits. Both are snapshots: you have to go and look. Every other way to read your Claude usage, usage credits included, is in how to check Claude Code usage.

SessionWatcher keeps the current session and the weekly limit in the Mac menu bar, with the time to each reset, and alerts you before you run out. Its Top Sessions list is the session viewer the picker lacks: the sessions that cost the most today, over the last 7 days or across every session it has seen, kept after Claude Code deletes old transcripts, with the outliers flagged against your usual session and the command to resume each one. It tells you which task used up your five hours.

Frequently asked questions

Where are Claude Code sessions saved?

On your computer, as JSONL transcripts at ~/.claude/projects/<project>/<session-id>.jsonl, where <project> is your working directory path with every character other than letters and digits replaced by a dash. Setting CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR moves them off ~/.claude.

How long does Claude Code keep session history?

Thirty days by default. Transcripts older than that are swept away; the cleanupPeriodDays setting in settings.json changes the period, and claude purge deletes a project's transcripts sooner.

Can I resume a Claude Code session started in another folder?

Yes. Press Ctrl+A in the session picker to list sessions from every project on the machine, or pass the session ID to claude --resume: from v2.1.223 it searches the current project, its worktrees, then every other project.

How long is a Claude Code session on Pro or Max?

For usage, five hours: Pro and Max have a five-hour session limit and a weekly limit, and Settings > Usage on claude.ai shows how much of the current session you have used and the time left in it. A saved conversation has no time limit; you can resume it until the 30-day retention sweep.

Does /clear delete my Claude Code session?

No. /clear starts a new session with an empty context and saves the previous one, which you can reopen with /resume. The cost and duration totals in /usage start again from zero for the new session.

Sources

All read on 30 Oct 2026:

Claude Code: manage sessions: resume, naming, the picker, branching, export, where transcripts are stored and how long they are kept.
Claude Code CLI reference: --continue, --resume and how a session ID is searched across projects.
Claude Code: manage costs effectively: the /usage Session block, plan usage bars, the Team and Enterprise windows and the session limit message.
Use Claude Code with your Pro or Max plan: the five-hour session limit and the weekly limit.
Usage limit best practices: Settings > Usage and its current session bar.