Recover a deleted Claude conversation

The Claude Desktop app (and claude.ai in a browser) is a Chromium shell that aggressively caches every response it receives, including full conversation bodies and generated artifacts. A conversation deleted in the UI still exists as compressed HTTP bodies in that Chromium blockfile cache — until the cache evicts it. This is a race: every step below exists to win it, so freeze the source before doing anything else, including reading the rest of this file twice.

1. Freeze the source

Fully quit the Claude Desktop app — File -> Exit / Menu -> Quit, not the window's close button — then confirm no Claude process remains (ps aux | grep -i claude on macOS/Linux, Task Manager on Windows). Check twice. A running process can still write to the cache and evict the very entry you're trying to save.

Done when: the process list shows zero Claude matches, on two consecutive checks.

2. Snapshot the cache before touching anything else

Locate the OS-specific cache directory: