Desktop app: archiving and unarchiving does not recover zombie threads stuck on Thinking
Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Mar 8, 2026 by twentyOne2x Closed Mar 8, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Summary
In the Codex macOS desktop app, a thread that is already in a zombie/stuck state remains broken after being archived and then unarchived.
Problem
Archiving and unarchiving does not reset or recover the thread state. After restore, the thread can still show the broken Thinking / Interrupt-only UI and remain unusable.
Observed behavior
- A thread enters a zombie state
- The thread is archived and later unarchived
- After restore, it is still stuck / unusable
- The composer state is still broken instead of returning to a normal send state
Expected behavior
Either:
- unarchiving should restore a usable thread state, or
- the app should detect the broken thread state and surface a recovery path instead of preserving the zombie state forever
Platform
macOS desktop app
Related
Likely related to zombie/stuck-thread reports such as #12852 and #11902, but this report is specifically about archive/unarchive not clearing the broken thread state.
2 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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I wouldn't expect archiving to fix a broken thread.
If you have details about a "zombie" thread, please open a bug report or respond to an existing one. Use the
/feedbackslash command to upload the session and include the thread ID in your report.