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Add configurable audible alert for pending permission approvals in Codex CLI #11604
Description
What variant of Codex are you using?
CLI
What feature would you like to see?
I’d like to request an improvement for Codex CLI: play a configurable audible alert whenever the agent requests a permission approval (similar to Copilot CLI).
Why this helps
During long-running tasks, I’m not always watching the terminal. Approval prompts can be missed, which adds unnecessary delay.
Proposed behavior
- Add a config option: approval_sound (on/off)
- Optionally allow:
- choosing sound type/volume
- using system notification sound
- repeating alert every X seconds while approval is pending
Expected outcome
Faster response to approval prompts and smoother human-in-the-loop workflows.
Additional information
No response
Activity
etraut-openai commentedon Feb 12, 2026
The challenge here is that the interactive CLI uses a TUI (terminal user interface), and terminals don't support general audio playback. Some terminals support OS-level toasts via an OSC9 escape sequence. Most terminals support a basic "beep" sound using a "bel" character. Codex supports both of these, but you may need to configure to get it to work with your particular terminal. See this documentation for details.
Playback of an arbitrary wave file is theoretically possible, but it would work only for local terminal sessions, so it's not clear that would be a good feature.
We have more flexibility here in our GUI-based Codex clients — in particular, our recently-released Codex app. It allows for more configuration with regard to notifications.
youngjoel commentedon Aug 12, 2026
Just need to add a new notify event type beyond
agent-turn-complete. Say anapproval-requestedevent.This is the biggest productivity hit for me with codex-cli.
youngjoel commentedon Aug 13, 2026
Ah well, can basically do it with:
[[hooks.PermissionRequest]]
matcher = ".*"
[[hooks.PermissionRequest.hooks]]
type = "command"
command = "~/.codex/make_a_sound_frog.zsh"
in the config.toml