Codex app: Enable thoughts display
Open 💬 8 comments Opened Feb 3, 2026 by pocketpixels
Please provide an option to display Codex' thoughts in the desktop app, both while it is working and afterwards. It is valuable to see what the model is currently thinking about and focusing on so that the user can potentially interrupt it when it is going in a wrong direction and steer it back on track. And it is helpful to know how it arrived at a solution after the fact as well.
It is fine to hide (or collapse) the thoughts by default, but please provide an option to display them (similar to Ctrl-T in the CLI).
8 Comments
^ Huge value-add, love this feature in CLI.
Agree, a very necessary function
this is a big blocker to using the codex app for serious work
bumping this. this is an absolutely vital and necessary feature that should have been built in from release.
Cross-posting but this is very problematic given that I primarily use codex for long-running sessions. Not being able to peek into the thinking blocks when Codex is thinking 1hr+ makes me question whether to kill the session or let it continue. Feels like driving with a blindfold on.
https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/8995#issuecomment-3894508749
seems a bit better with 5.3 - not in a true "showing thinking" way though - more-so in a "more frequent updates on what it did/is going to do" sort of way. greater peace of mind? yes. full peace of mind? no - the option to steer the agent mid flow is great - but this steering would be more effective if I could steer based upon how the model is thinking/what it is thinking about.
Someone made a patcher for the Electron app: https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1qvm0cn/i_asked_codex_to_enable_thinking_blocks_display/
Indeed. One of the useful function in Cursor is that it displays thoughts by default.