"Tab" no longer triggers path completion in Codex CLI — now used for focus switching
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Jul 13, 2025 by bentito Closed Aug 20, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (bolinfest, collaborator)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of Codex is running?
$ codex --version codex-cli 0.5.0
Which model were you using?
o4-mini or any
What platform is your computer?
MacOS with iTerm2
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Try to tab for filesystem completion as used to work.
What is the expected behavior?
Does filesystem completion to give accurate paths in the prompting
What do you see instead?
Swaps focus to Messages pane and vice versa
Additional information
I'd really like this have been implemented as a user configurable item since swapping focus seems like a pretty useless use of the tab key, whereas filesystem type ahead was super useful.
4 Comments
Was this in the TypeScript CLI?
Note that
@does fuzzy file matching in the Rust version.oh, sorry about long delay @bolinfest . Must be Rust cli!
@is great but I had no idea about how it works. In case you are like me, this comment is for you:Want to refer to a file/path when prompting codex? yes? then type
@(literal, shift-2 on a US English keyboard);type the filename (no need to tab through dirs) and you'll see prompting with what files are found, choose one, hit enter (or tab) and you'll get the exact path in your prompt.
I will say
@isn't quite as good astabwhen you have no idea what the filename you want to refer to is. If you really wanted to see the filesystem to make it remind you of paths and names@won't help you nearly as much astab, you'll be off in another shell doinglsI'll second this request. Tab completion much more useful than @ - thanks!