Codex Mac app high memory usage after latest update on macOS ( Codex 26.422.21637 )
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
Codex 26.422.21637
What subscription do you have?
Chatgpt Plus
What platform is your computer?
Mac os ( macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 )
What issue are you seeing?
I’ve noticed higher memory usage from the Codex Mac app after updating to the latest version, and I’m trying to figure out if this is expected or a bug.
After launching Codex, it loads normally but then gradually starts using a lot of memory over time. Before the recent update, the app used noticeably less memory on the same machine.
Setup:
MacBook Air M2 15 ( 8gb)
Latest macOS (macOS Tahoe 26.4.1)
Latest Codex app ( Codex 26.422.21637)
Is anyone else seeing increased memory usage with the latest Codex release on macOS, or is it just my setup?
<img width="675" height="473" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cc911183-ab56-43bc-9644-18c0759a228a" />
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Open the Codex desktop app on macOS.
Start a normal coding session
Leave Codex open in the background while working. You can observe increased memory usage compared to previous versions.
What is the expected behavior?
I expect the Codex app’s memory usage to stabilize at a reasonable level during normal use and not keep growing over time when the app is mostly idle.
Ideally, memory usage should be similar to or lower than previous versions on the same machine and workloads
Additional information
The memory increase happens even if I only have one project open.
7 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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MacBook Pro M1 Pro ( 16gb)
Latest macOS (macOS Tahoe 26.4.1)
Latest Codex app ( Codex 26.422.21637)
ChatGPT Business
Having the exact same issue. It's barely working. Other apps are affected by the heavy loading.
019dbef9-abbf-7f52-bfbb-bfe6fd4a7faa
MacBook M3 pro 18 GB
macOS Tahoe 26.3
ChatGPT Pro plan
<img width="408" height="109" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/985cb06d-290b-408b-8cfc-fde75d9fb56c" />
<img width="498" height="65" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6dde74d8-9036-4b82-8dd7-0fbf4ae97817" />
Possibly related to the high resource usage being reported:
During extended use (~4 hours, ~7 sessions without restarting Codex), a Python process spawned by Codex grew to extremely high memory usage (~135 GB in Activity Monitor), causing heavy swap usage (~25 GB) and system degradation (UI lag, audio crackling).
Restarting Codex immediately resolved the issue, suggesting the process was not being cleaned up or was accumulating state over time.
It's unclear whether this is:
Environment:
Additional notes:
Happy to provide logs if someone can point me to the relevant locations (Python subprocess logs, Codex agent logs, etc).
<img width="1916" height="1024" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a4b88983-0ab1-4948-8eed-140f4e2ce5ea" />
Woke my computer from sleep today and Codex was using 138GB. There were like 4-5
codex_chronicleprocesses also using 25-35GB each. I am impressed honestly.Same here. Latest codex, had 80GB usage in iTerm and it nearly crashed my whole machine. Very annoying and baffling that this is not being controlled properly.
@etraut-openai, please redirect this if you are not the right person to handle it.
This appears to be a major runaway memory issue in Codex, the “lightweight coding agent that runs in your terminal.”
Users have been reporting similar problems for weeks across all major operating systems. I have seen reports from users of Linux, Windows, and macOS, and I am adding Linux under WSL to that list.
This needs urgent attention. I have not seen meaningful OpenAI activity on the many related issues reporting this behavior.
It is not acceptable for Codex to bring down an entire WSL instance after roughly 20 minutes of light usage.