Switchboard can remember which sessions were open when you closed it and reopen them automatically on the next launch.
Whenever you open or close a session, Switchboard saves the current "working set" — the list of open sessions, their project paths, and which one was active — to global settings. On startup, this list is used to restore your previous state.
Each session is resumed using the project's current session-launch settings (permission mode, worktrees, pre-launch command). Options from the previous launch are not frozen — the session starts fresh with the current project defaults.
Sessions that no longer exist in the index (deleted JSONL files, removed worktrees) are silently skipped during restore.
Technical note (for contributors): "restore" is a respawn, not a reattach. The underlying terminal process (PTY) is a child of the Electron main process and is killed when Switchboard quits — nothing survives the process boundary. On restart, Switchboard spawns a brand-new PTY per restored session (using
claude --resume <sessionId>for Claude sessions), it does not reconnect to anything left running. True reattach — replaying buffered terminal output onto an existing, still-running PTY — only happens within a single app run (e.g. the renderer reloads, or you click back into a session tab), gated on the session still being present in the in-memoryactiveSessionsmap. Once the app has fully quit, that map is empty, so restore always takes the "spawn new PTY" path.
Open Global Settings and look for Restore Sessions on Startup:
| Option | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Don't restore | Sessions are not restored; Switchboard opens to the empty state |
| Ask on startup (default) | A non-modal toast bar appears asking "Restore N sessions from last time?" with Restore / Dismiss buttons |
| Restore automatically | Sessions are reopened silently on every launch, no prompt |
Note: This setting is read at launch. Changing it takes effect the next time you start Switchboard.
Restore Sessions on Startup is a global-only setting. See Settings Reference.