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[Windows Chat 26.1002.52244] Completed answer bodies disappear on chat revisit; duration and actions remain #52493
Description
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
Windows MSIX OpenAI.Codex 26.1002.7124.0; bundled application version 26.1002.52244. Versions verified from installed metadata rather than the About dialog.
What subscription do you have?
Not collected for this report.
What platform is your computer?
Windows 11 Home Chinese edition, OS version 10.0.26200, x64. Observed repeatedly around October 8–9, 2026 (UTC+08:00).
What issue are you seeing?
In the unified application's ChatGPT / ordinary Chat view, several already completed and previously displayed assistant answers in an existing project conversation become blank after switching to another conversation and returning.
The corresponding user messages remain visible. For the blank assistant messages, their completed thinking-duration labels and action toolbars remain visible, but the entire answer body is missing. A user-provided screenshot captured two such blank answer bodies, with duration labels of approximately 1m 15s and 1m 47s. That screenshot is deliberately not uploaded because it contains private conversation text.
There have been two observed recovery patterns:
- Earlier incidents: waiting did not restore several answers; fully quitting and reopening the client restored most of them. On one restart the newest answer remained unavailable while earlier ones returned; it eventually appeared later.
- Latest observation: immediately after revisiting the chat, several answer bodies are initially blank, then reappear after roughly a second or slightly longer.
These are completed answers, not merely a pending generation spinner. There is no established permanent data loss, but the UI makes completed content appear lost and gives no useful recovery status.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Intermittent, user-observed sequence on Windows:
- Open an existing ordinary project chat.
- Ask questions and let the assistant finish. Read the answers while they are present.
- Switch to another conversation, wait or continue using the application, then return to the original conversation.
- Observe intact user messages and assistant duration labels/toolbars, but absent assistant answer bodies for the latest several turns.
- Sometimes the answer bodies reappear shortly afterward; in earlier incidents only fully quitting and relaunching restored most of them.
The exact disappearance timestamp and affected-turn token/context utilization were not captured. No new messages were required to regenerate those recovered answers.
What is the expected behavior?
Previously completed answers should remain visible when revisiting a conversation. If history reconciliation is genuinely pending, show an explicit loading/error state rather than an apparently finished but empty answer. Recovery should not depend on fully quitting the application.
Additional information
Related reports and why this Windows case is being reported
-
Same-installation answer-selection keyboard-copy report: [Windows Chat 26.1002.52244] Ctrl+C fails for selected answer text; Edit > Copy and composer Ctrl+C work #52492; separate startup/activation report: [Windows MSIX 26.1002.7124] Ordinary relaunch triggers same-version registration repairs and PACKAGE_UPDATING #52494. No shared cause is asserted.
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[ChatGPT macOS 26.1002.52244] Completed answers disappear after returning from Schedules; older answers reappear #52454 describes a closely similar macOS completed-answer disappearance after navigating through Schedules, including retained duration labels. This case adds Windows evidence and a simpler chat-to-chat navigation trigger.
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[Windows Desktop] Streaming response disappears from chat; complete response returns after update/restart #52398 describes a Windows streaming response disappearing and returning after an update/restart; its completion time was not established. Here the user had already read the completed answers before navigating away.
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[ChatGPT Desktop][macOS 26.1002.52244] Existing chats stop updating; new window restores state, response text intermittently hidden #52300 describes macOS existing-chat rendering/state problems on the same internal application build.
These may share an underlying bug, but platform, trigger, and completion-state differences have not been resolved. Please merge/mark duplicate if the Windows completed-response case belongs to the same tracked defect.
Sanitized concurrent diagnostic signals
The inspected desktop logs contain ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT on ordinary Chat service requests:
| Local time (UTC+08:00) | Sanitized endpoint pattern / observation |
|---|---|
| October 8, around 15:18 | /gizmos/{redacted}/conversations requests timed out |
| October 9, around 12:54 | /gizmos/{redacted} and /conversation/init requests timed out |
| October 9, around 12:55–12:57 | /celsius/ws/user requests timed out |
| October 9, around 12:57:59 | /conversations request timed out |
These are concurrent signals, not a proven causal trace to the affected conversation. A status value of 500 accompanying a client timeout is not evidence of an actual HTTP 500 response from OpenAI. A system loopback proxy was configured; its settings were not changed. The affected conversation was not tested in a browser, so this report does not assert browser/server completeness based on other users' reports.
No matching renderer-process termination or out-of-memory signature was located in the inspected main-log window; absence from those logs does not exclude an unlogged renderer/state issue. No database-corruption diagnosis is established.
On this installation, Ctrl+C also fails specifically for selected answer text while Edit > Copy and the answer's Copy button work. This is a separate symptom; no common cause is asserted.
Please investigate completed-message hydration/rendering and conversation-view restoration after navigation, including recovery from failed history/init/WebSocket requests. The user has not consented to destructive resets or deleting project/history/memory data as troubleshooting.
Only selected diagnostic facts are shared, with the affected user's explicit authorization. No private chat title, content, project identifiers, screenshots, full logs, credentials, usernames, or personal paths are uploaded.
Activity
github-actions commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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chyperion7 commentedon Oct 10, 2026
I'm experiencing a very similar issue, with some additional observations that may help narrow down the cause.
Environment
1. Assistant responses disappear without switching conversations
Previously completed assistant responses sometimes disappear immediately after I submit a new prompt, even though I stay in the same conversation.
The user messages remain visible, along with the assistant's processing-time labels, but the response bodies disappear.
I also observed that when a different assistant response disappears, an earlier missing response sometimes reappears.
The behavior is intermittent and not consistently reproducible.
2. Restarting restores the missing text
After completely closing and restarting the Windows desktop app, all previously missing assistant text returned.
No prompts needed to be regenerated.
This appears consistent with a conversation display or state-synchronization issue rather than permanent loss of response content.
3. Embedded images remain broken across platforms
There is also a potentially separate issue involving images embedded in assistant responses.
These are dynamically retrieved images displayed alongside recommendations, not images generated with an image-generation model.
They appear as gray placeholders with broken-image icons.
Unlike the missing text, these images do not recover after restarting the Windows app.
I checked the same conversation on:
The images are missing on all three platforms, while the surrounding text renders normally.
Additional context
These problems have occurred during long research conversations containing multiple tool calls, citations, tables, and rich UI elements. However, I cannot confirm that tool usage causes the issue.
I suspect the disappearing messages and persistent image placeholders may involve different failure mechanisms.
Related issue: #52398.
Additional finding: Cross-conversation comparison
I found another useful distinction.
I have two conversations containing the same type of automatically retrieved web images embedded in assistant responses (not AI-generated images).
This suggests the image issue is not a general inability of the Windows client to render this type of image.
It may instead involve image references or resource persistence associated with specific messages or conversations.
I cannot yet determine whether the conversation's originating client is a contributing factor, but the difference appears worth investigating.
zhouqinglu-boop commentedon Oct 10, 2026
Additional user report (October 2026): I have recently encountered similar disappearing assistant-answer content in both Codex Chat and ChatGPT. An answer was visibly generated and I had already begun reading it, but after the interface refreshed/reloaded it was no longer shown. The issue has also occurred when continuing the conversation with a subsequent question. In the affected view, thinking-duration markers (for example ~20s, ~48s, ~35s) and a 'Continue' control can remain visible while portions of previously visible answer text are absent. No clear warning explains whether the response is still loading, temporarily hidden, or not persisted. This is intermittent and particularly disruptive to long research tasks. I cannot yet establish whether the underlying transcript was lost or whether this is a rendering/history-rehydration issue, and do not claim a common root cause with other reports. Please investigate reliable restoration of previously rendered answers, provide a clear recovery/loading indication, and avoid silently dropping rendered content. A screenshot is not publicly attached because it contains confidential client-related material.
DashiHan commentedon Oct 15, 2026
Additional Windows ChatGPT desktop report, observed on October 15, 2026:
Environment (user-reported)
26.1007.71326Observed behavior
Previously completed assistant replies that were visible and readable disappear after sending a new message in the same conversation. Sometimes only the assistant message's action toolbar and thinking-duration label remain, while the reply body is blank.
Steps observed
Web comparison
The same conversation works normally on ChatGPT Web, where the replies are visible. This adds a desktop-versus-web comparison for the affected conversation; it does not establish the underlying cause.
Expected behavior
Previously completed replies should remain visible when continuing the conversation.
Adding this as a follow-up to the existing report rather than opening a duplicate issue. This report adds the newer client version and web comparison; no private conversation text or screenshots are included.
werstaja commentedon Oct 15, 2026
same behavior
Windows ChatGPT desktop client
26.1007.71326
The message has been saved in the browser, but in the app, it appears as shown in the screenshot—only the duration of the "thinking" process is displayed.