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Windows Desktop: brief mouse/input freezes after opening Codex with large sessions directory #28109

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Windows Desktop: brief mouse/input freezes after opening Codex with large sessions directory#28109
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appIssues related to the Codex desktop appbugSomething isn't workingperformancesessionIssues involving session (thread) management, resuming, forking, naming, archivingwindows-osIssues related to Codex on Windows systems

Description

@Shoting-star
Shoting-star
opened on Jun 13, 2026

What happened?

After a recent Codex Desktop update, opening/running Codex on Windows causes intermittent short system input freezes. The mouse cursor and normal interaction occasionally pause for about 1-2 seconds, then recover. The pauses are short but frequent enough to noticeably affect normal use.

This seems similar to reports of Windows Desktop stutter/freezing and possible session-history scanning overhead.

Related issues/discussions I found while checking for similar reports:

Environment

  • App: Codex Desktop for Windows
  • Codex package version: 26.609.4994.0
  • Package: OpenAI.Codex_26.609.4994.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
  • OS: Windows 10 Pro, 64-bit
  • OS build: 26200
  • Shell/context used for inspection: PowerShell
  • Timezone: Asia/Hong_Kong

Local observations

The issue occurs while Codex Desktop is open. A local inspection found a relatively large Codex sessions directory:

  • Sessions path: C:\Users\<user>\.codex\sessions
  • JSONL session files: 46
  • Total session JSONL size: 361.25 MB
  • Largest session file: 232.65 MB
  • Largest session file path pattern: sessions\2026\05\14\rollout-2026-05-14T21-41-15-...jsonl
  • Largest file last write time: 2026-05-18 03:45:26

I also checked for the WSL_DISTRO_NAME environment-variable issue mentioned in #22376. It was empty at User, Machine, and Process scope, so that does not appear to be the cause in this case.

Several Codex processes were present while the app was running; the largest observed working sets were roughly 418 MB, 347 MB, and 245 MB.

Expected behavior

Opening Codex Desktop should not cause global mouse/input freezes, even if local session history contains large JSONL files.

Actual behavior

With Codex Desktop open, mouse/input intermittently freezes for roughly 1-2 seconds.

Possible cause

Based on the local state and related reports, this may be related to Desktop scanning/parsing/rendering large files under ~/.codex/sessions, or otherwise doing synchronous work on the UI path when session history is large.

Privacy note

I am not attaching the session JSONL contents because they may contain private conversation/project data. The report only includes file counts, sizes, and path shape.

Activity

  1. github-actions
    added
    bugSomething isn't working
    appIssues related to the Codex desktop app
    windows-osIssues related to Codex on Windows systems
    performance
    sessionIssues involving session (thread) management, resuming, forking, naming, archiving
    on Jun 13, 2026

  2. github-actions commented on Jun 13, 2026

    @github-actions
    github-actionsBot
    on Jun 13, 2026 – with GitHub Actions
    Contributor

    Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

    Powered by Codex Action

  3. Shoting-star commented on Jun 13, 2026

    @Shoting-star
    Shoting-star
    on Jun 13, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    Author

    Additional observation:

    After Codex Desktop is opened, the stutter/freezing usually improves after waiting a few minutes. However, if Codex is fully exited and then opened again, the same issue returns and I need to wait a few minutes again before it becomes usable.

    Older Codex Desktop versions did not have this startup-period mouse/input freezing behavior. Even though it eventually improves after a few minutes, that startup delay significantly affects normal use.

  4. Shoting-star commented on Jun 13, 2026

    @Shoting-star
    Shoting-star
    on Jun 13, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector
    Author

    The mouse/input freezing also happens whenever I open a historical conversation/session from Codex Desktop. After selecting/opening a history item, the mouse frequently freezes for a few seconds and then recovers.

  5. Necmttn commented on Jun 21, 2026

    @Necmttn
    Necmttn
    on Jun 21, 2026

    Desktop startup should not synchronously hydrate large session directories on the UI path.

    A small manifest can track session id, path, mtime, size, hash, title, and last timestamp. Startup reads the manifest first, schedules changed-file parsing off the renderer thread, and reports scan duration/file counts in diagnostics.

    That would turn the freeze into an inspectable indexing backlog.

    Generated with ax.

  6. btkh95 commented on Jun 23, 2026

    @btkh95
    btkh95
    on Jun 23, 2026

    I am facing this issue as well. At first I went down the rabbit hole of removing my recently local installed rg.exe and nodejs. I figured out that rg was causing this issue. Post uninstalling I was still facing this issue and I realised codex has its one rg? and is causing massive lags and crashes.

    I realised it's worse when I engage in a past project with extended history and long context. Was not having this issue the week before as well.

    This should be an urgent matter to be addressed, as where it currently standa it makes VSCode with codex and Codex App virtually unusable

  7. oc83126-lgtm commented on Jun 24, 2026

    @oc83126-lgtm
    oc83126-lgtm
    on Jun 24, 2026

    Adding another Windows repro that looks very similar to this issue.

    Environment:

    • Codex Desktop package: OpenAI.Codex 26.616.10790.0
    • OS: Windows build 26220
    • Install family: Microsoft Store / AppX desktop package

    Symptom:

    • After launching Codex Desktop, the app window can become sluggish even when other heavy apps are not being actively used.
    • The noticeable symptoms are UI-level stutter: dragging the window, typing into the composer, and scrolling can lag.
    • This is not just slow model output or network delay; the desktop window interaction itself can feel choppy shortly after opening Codex.

    Local observations:

    • ~/.codex/sessions total size is about 3064 MB.
    • Largest rollout JSONL is about 738 MB.
    • Multiple other rollout JSONL files are over 100 MB.
    • Current active thread file is small, so the issue is not only caused by the active thread currently being huge.
    • Recent Windows event logs did not show a Codex Application Hang event.
    • Recent System event logs did not show NVIDIA/display driver errors.
    • A later idle sample did not show CPU, memory, or disk queue saturation, which makes this look like intermittent startup/history/UI processing stutter rather than the machine being generally overloaded.

    Related log observation:

    • ~/.codex/logs_2.sqlite is about 400 MB, with most of that space reported as SQLite free pages.
    • It still records some TRACE entries on 26.616.10790.0, but idle sampling after the update did not show continuous runaway disk writes.
    • So in this repro, the startup/window/input/scroll lag seems more strongly correlated with large local session history than with constant log growth.

    Privacy note:

    • I am not attaching raw session JSONL files or raw logs because they may contain private conversation, project data, local paths, or tool output.

  8. archasek commented on Jul 1, 2026

    @archasek
    archasek
    on Jul 1, 2026

    really annoying regression :(

  9. ryanbevins commented on Jul 2, 2026

    @ryanbevins
    ryanbevins
    on Jul 2, 2026

    Also experiencing this, messages from Codex cause it to happen, alongside opening new conversations until they've been cached.

    Specs:
    AMD Ryzen 7950x
    64gb DDR5 RAM
    RTX 5080 GPU

  10. ryanbevins commented on Jul 11, 2026

    @ryanbevins
    ryanbevins
    on Jul 11, 2026

    This appears to have been solved with the latest update.

  11. rodalpho commented on Jul 11, 2026

    @rodalpho
    rodalpho
    on Jul 11, 2026

    Not solved in 26.707.31428 for me.

  12. realcp1018 commented on Jul 13, 2026

    @realcp1018
    realcp1018
    on Jul 13, 2026

    Still reproducible for me on Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19045 with Codex Desktop 26.707.62119.
    The impact is severe: immediately after launching or restarting the app, and again whenever switching to or opening another conversation thread, the system-wide mouse cursor becomes nearly frozen or moves at an extremely low frame rate until the session content finishes loading and the UI completes rendering.

  13. ryanbevins commented on Jul 14, 2026

    @ryanbevins
    ryanbevins
    on Jul 14, 2026

    Still reproducible for me on Windows 10 Pro 10.0.19045 with Codex Desktop 26.707.62119. The impact is severe: immediately after launching or restarting the app, and again whenever switching to or opening another conversation thread, the system-wide mouse cursor becomes nearly frozen or moves at an extremely low frame rate until the session content finishes loading and the UI completes rendering.

    Was occuring for me before recent updates but is now gone, may have something to do with Windows updates or driver updates considering mine disappeared.

  14. Shoting-star
    closed this as completedon Jul 14, 2026

  15. rodalpho commented on Jul 14, 2026

    @rodalpho
    rodalpho
    on Jul 14, 2026

    This is NOT fixed, I just opened codex then selected a long session and my mouse lagged like before.

    This is on windows version 26.707.72221.

  16. Sk-only commented on Jul 16, 2026

    @Sk-only
    Sk-only
    on Jul 16, 2026

    Is there any good way to solve this? I have the exact same problem.

  17. realcp1018 commented on Jul 17, 2026

    @realcp1018
    realcp1018
    on Jul 17, 2026

    I think things are going really bad at the moment. Cursor is lagging even when tasks are running in the background.
    I'm on the latest version, 26.715.21425.

  18. tyc0on commented on Jul 18, 2026

    @tyc0on
    tyc0on
    on Jul 18, 2026

    I am getting this too, isolated it to ChatGPT/codex app

  19. CypherPotato commented on Jul 27, 2026

    @CypherPotato
    CypherPotato
    on Jul 27, 2026

    yea, this still happening.

  20. lordnelsonpt commented on Aug 10, 2026

    @lordnelsonpt
    lordnelsonpt
    on Aug 10, 2026

    Having the same problem, it just gets worse every day... :(

  21. chourunzhong-rgb commented on Aug 14, 2026

    @chourunzhong-rgb
    chourunzhong-rgb
    on Aug 14, 2026 – with ChatGPT Codex Connector

    Additional symptom clarification from a Windows Codex Desktop user:

    • On launch, moving the physical mouse sometimes produces no visible cursor movement for a short period.
    • The user then stops moving the mouse, and after a delay the cursor suddenly responds/catches up.
    • The problem is transient and goes away after Codex has been open for a while.
    • This feels like input latency/freezing or queued pointer events rather than purely visual cursor jitter.

    This seems particularly consistent with the brief mouse/input freezes described in this issue.

  22. tyc0on commented on Aug 15, 2026

    @tyc0on
    tyc0on
    on Aug 15, 2026

    On Windows, the latest Codex update caused frequent split-second system-wide mouse and shell freezes while Codex was open.

    We first suspected repeated Conversation state not found errors and stale session state. A cleanup attempt broke the app, so we rolled everything back. After rollback, the same errors and old state were restored—but the lag was gone. The meaningful change was that the rollback forced a genuine shutdown of every Codex/ChatGPT process and a fresh restart. The main process working set fell from about 1.36 GB to 334 MB.

    What others should try:

    1. Fully quit Codex.
    2. In Task Manager, confirm every ChatGPT.exe process has exited. Closing the window alone may leave hidden processes running.
    3. Reopen Codex.

    No sessions or state files need to be deleted. This suggests accumulated Electron process/renderer memory or cache state; the exact internal cause is not yet proven.

    Affected package: OpenAI.Codex_26.810.6296.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0.

  23. rodalpho commented on Aug 15, 2026

    @rodalpho
    rodalpho
    on Aug 15, 2026

    That does not fix the problem this issue covers, which happens consistently in a fresh start.

  24. CypherPotato commented on Aug 15, 2026

    @CypherPotato
    CypherPotato
    on Aug 15, 2026

    Just abandoned Codex for lack of Windows support and started working on AVI btw https://github.com/aivaxlabs/avi

  25. rodalpho commented on Aug 15, 2026

    @rodalpho
    rodalpho
    on Aug 15, 2026

    Yep, I use T3code instead.

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