Codex App (WSL mode on arm64 cpu not working)
Open 💬 13 comments Opened Mar 5, 2026 by TheBeems
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.304.1528.0
What subscription do you have?
Plus
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26200.0 x64 (Snapdragon X Elite arm64 cpu)
What issue are you seeing?
When running the codex in WSL mode, it gives the following error:
Codex app-server exited unexpectedly (code=126, signal=null).
Most recent error: /usr/bin/bash: line 1: /mnt/c/Users/user1/.codex/bin/wsl/codex: Success
ChatGPT suggested it might have to do with the architecture.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Install the Codex App from the Windows store
- Change
runCodexInWindowsSubsystemForLinuxtotrue
What is the expected behavior?
The Codex App starts normally.
Additional information
> uname -m
aarch64
> dpkg --print-architecture
arm64
> ls -l /mnt/c/Users/user1/.codex/bin/wsl/codex
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user1 user1 111740344 Mar 5 09:38 /mnt/c/Users/user1/.codex/bin/wsl/codex
> file /mnt/c/Users/user1/.codex/bin/wsl/codex
/mnt/c/Users/user1/.codex/bin/wsl/codex: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), static-pie linked, stripped
13 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Currently now official ARM64 build from openai, but the community has repackaged the official codex app to an ARM64 version, including working WSL, remote and Computer Use. You can find it on: https://github.com/airtaxi/codex-app-windows-arm64
I use that version as my daily Codex App and it works great!
Exact same error.But i figured out to turn it off without reinstall.
Go to 'C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\.codex'
Open .codex-global-state.json with notepad or vscode.
Search runCodexInWindowsSubsystemForLinux
If its true rename it to false then save&quit.
Reopen codex you'll find it works again.
Thank you so much it fixes my problem. It is shame on OpenAI don't fix such a simple think.
This is not exactly a "fix". It just configures the Codex App to switch back to the Windows native agent.
WSL on ARM64 is still not supported.
they ship really slow
I see this as well on WSL 2, ARM CPU, Surface Laptop 7. The odd thing is if you wipe the entire
.codexdirectory inLocalSettingsand restart Codex and reconfigure it it's fine - so this does look like some form of internal issue inside the Codex app when using WSL2 on an ARM chipset.Deleting de .codex directory resets it back to using native windows. Setting it back to WSL makes it crash again.
I got my entire dev stack inside WSL, so having codex being able to start in WSL mode is a must have for me. Compiling for ARM64 shouldn't be much of a big problem.
@codex can you compile the Codex App for ARM64 please, so we can use WSL on our arm64 windows devices? This shouldn't take much of your compute to fix...
In issue #17491, a user named airtaxi made a repackaging project for the codex app to use native ARM64 binaries. I used it to add the required ARM64 binaries for WSL in https://github.com/airtaxi/codex-app-windows-arm64/pull/3
Everything is working now inside WSL. It is an unofficial hack for the meantime until OpenAI make their own ARM64 packaging with proper ARM64 codex binaries.
WSL still not working on arm64
@tmptknn , the community has fixed it in this repo: https://github.com/airtaxi/codex-app-windows-arm64 . It is unofficial, but the repackage works on arm64 including WSL and Computer Use.
My
runCodexInWindowsSubsystemForLinuxwas in my.codex/config.toml, for anyone else coming here. Codex might've updated where it stored it, or I might've done something else and didn't realize it, but I did need to change that.