Animated title interacting poorly with Iterm2

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Mar 31, 2026 by akovanda Closed Mar 31, 2026

What version of Codex CLI is running?

codex-cli 0.117.0

What subscription do you have?

Pro

Which model were you using?

gpt-5.4

What platform is your computer?

MacOS

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

iTerm2

What issue are you seeing?

After upgrading from 0.116.0 to 0.117.0, Codex continuously rewrites the
terminal title while it is working. In iTerm2 this shows up as the tab/title
changing constantly and can produce an audible tick/beep effect.

This appears to be a regression from the terminal-title feature introduced in
0.117.0. The default title selection now includes spinner plus project,
which causes the TUI to rewrite the title every 100ms while work is active even
when the user has not explicitly configured animated terminal titles.

I prepared a fix here:

https://github.com/openai/codex/compare/main...akovanda:fix/static-default-terminal-title?expand=1

That change makes the default title static (project) and keeps spinner
behavior opt-in via explicit tui.terminal_title configuration.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Install or upgrade Codex CLI from 0.116.0 to 0.117.0.
  2. Run codex in iTerm2 on macOS.
  3. Start a task that keeps Codex active for more than a few seconds.
  4. Observe that the terminal/tab title updates continuously while Codex works.
  5. In iTerm2, this can manifest as an audible tick/beep or visibly noisy title

churn.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should not animate the terminal title by default. Terminal title updates
should stay static unless the user explicitly opts into spinner behavior.

Additional information

Workaround right now:

```toml
[tui]
terminal_title = []

or

[tui]
terminal_title = ["project"]```

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