Feature: allow choosing stable releases vs prereleases for update checks
Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Feb 21, 2026 by mihneaptu Closed Feb 21, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Summary
Please add a user-configurable update channel for Codex CLI:
stable(default): check and install only stable releasesprerelease: allow prereleases (alpha/beta/rc) for both checking and installing
Why
Right now users who want early fixes/features need prerelease support, while others want stable-only behavior.
Expected behavior
- A config setting in
config.tomlto choose channel. - The channel affects both:
- version discovery / prompting (update checks)
- the actual install command when user selects update
- Default remains
stable.
Context
Separate from this PR (Windows updater command execution reliability):
2 Comments
Which variant of Codex are you using? The CLI, IDE extension, or app?
We release the CLI very frequently (sometimes several times a day), so prereleases don't really make sense there. You can install alpha builds if you want.
For the IDE extension, we already release stable and prerelease versions, and you can select between them in VS Code or Cursor.
Got it, thanks for clarifying. I’ll keep using the manual install for now.