Performance regression: Codex CLI startup significantly slower since 0.117.0 (macOS + Linux)
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Apr 1, 2026 by jian-dong Closed Apr 1, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Description
Since upgrading to 0.117.0 and later, Codex CLI startup has become significantly slower.
This regression is reproducible across both macOS and Linux, suggesting it is not platform-specific.
Previously, launching codex was near-instant.
Now it consistently takes several seconds before becoming usable.
---
Environment
- Codex CLI version: 0.117.0+
- Platforms tested:
- macOS (Apple Silicon)
- Linux (x86_64)
- Reproducibility: 100%
---
What issue are you seeing?
codexstartup latency increased from ~instant to multiple seconds- Happens on every invocation
- Delay appears during initialization phase (before CLI becomes interactive)
---
Steps to reproduce
- Install codex >= 0.117.0
- Run:
``bash``
codex
- Observe startup delay
---
Expected behavior
Startup should be near-instant (as in <= 0.116.0)
---
Actual behavior
Startup consistently takes several seconds before CLI becomes usable
---
Regression
- Last known good: <= 0.116.0
- First bad: 0.117.0
---
3 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
Powered by Codex Action
I would like to work on this
I can confirm this issue; 0.118 and 0.117 take pretty long on every single cli startup (2 seconds on a very very fast developer machine), whereas 0.116 is literally instant. We rolled back our codex installs to 0.116 for now.
@etraut-openai
Technically the issue you linked may be a duplicate, but the issue title of the other issue scopes it exclusively to only Windows, whereas this issue was related to Linux/Mac. Can you change the title of the other issue? Otherwise this is a bit confusing.