OpenCode v1.18.4 landed on July 20 as the fourth patch in a six-day sprint that completed the Desktop v2 migration. If you are running OpenCode Desktop and have auto-update enabled — which is the default — you are already on the new layout. Tabs, a redesigned home page, persistent window sessions: all of it is now standard. There is also a Settings toggle that lets you revert to the old layout, and it exists for a reason. Two things that worked in v1.17 do not work yet in v2, and if your workflow depends on either of them, you should know before the update lands.
What Desktop v2 Actually Adds #
The headline change is tabs. OpenCode introduced tabbed sessions back in v1.17, but v1.18 makes the v2 tab layout the default and fills in the gaps: a Home tab toggle so you can jump between Home and your last active session, a dismissible intro popup for first-time v2 users, and desktop window tabs that now persist across restarts. Open three sessions, close the app, reopen it — your tabs come back.
The timeline also got meaningful work. More history loads at once, bottom anchoring is more reliable, and cold-load time dropped noticeably on large projects. These are quality-of-life fixes, not features, but they are the kind of thing you feel every time you open the app.
Five releases in six days is fast even for a project that ships weekly. v1.18.0 (July 14) through v1.18.4 (July 20) addresses 40+ individual fixes across desktop, web, and TUI, with v1.18.4 alone covering 15 changes: one feature, six improvements, eight bug fixes. The pace reflects that the team shipped the v2 layout as the default before it was fully stable — which brings us to the problems.
The Subagent Depth Limit: Long Overdue #
v1.18.2 added a subagent_depth
config option and set the default to 1. This means your primary agent can still spawn subagents, but those subagents cannot spawn their own sub-subagents. The community had been filing this issue for months — GitHub issues document cases where unconstrained subagent recursion ran sessions into 50,000+ tokens of useless intermediate work before hitting a context limit or dying on its own.
You can adjust the limit in opencode.jsonc
:
{
"subagent_depth": 1 // default: subagents cannot spawn sub-subagents
// "subagent_depth": 2 // allow one extra nesting level
// "subagent_depth": 0 // disable all subagent spawning
}
Setting it to 0 is aggressive but useful for simple, single-agent workflows. Setting it to 2 makes sense if you have deliberate orchestration patterns where a coordinator spawns specialists that need to call helpers. The important thing is that it is now a config decision you make intentionally, not an unlimited default.
Two Things the New UI Breaks #
The Build/Plan mode toggle is missing from the v2 UI. This was reported in multiple GitHub issues against v1.18.1 and v1.18.3. Plan mode runs a read-only analysis pass before making changes — it is not a cosmetic preference, it is a core workflow gate for teams that review before agents write. In the old layout, the toggle was visible in the chat interface. In v2, it is not there. Slash commands do not reliably substitute. The v1.18.4 release included six improvements and eight bug fixes without calling this out specifically, but community reports after July 20 suggest the toggle reappeared. Test it on your installation before you rely on it.
The second gap is worktrees. The team explicitly acknowledged that worktree support is not yet implemented in the v2 interface. If you use Git worktrees for parallel feature branches — common in team setups where agents work on separate trees simultaneously — the new UI does not support it. For now, the legacy layout remains available via Settings and supports worktrees as before.
What to Do Right Now #
If you are on OpenCode Desktop, check your version: v1.18.4 is current. If you are below that, update. If you use worktrees, go into Settings and toggle the legacy layout on before the v2 default overrides your preference. If you use Plan mode, open a session on v1.18.4 and confirm the toggle is back before a high-stakes run. For agentic workflows, add an explicit subagent_depth
value to your config rather than relying on the default.
Desktop v2 is a real improvement in session management and UI responsiveness. The team built the right thing. Shipping it as the default before worktrees and Plan mode carried over cleanly was the wrong call, and the number of fix releases in six days says as much. v1.18.4 is the version to run — just verify the two gaps are closed in your setup before cutting over completely.