Feature Request: Markdown List Support for Prompt Input in Desktop App
Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened May 2, 2026 by akshayverma1 Closed Jul 1, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (etraut-openai, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What variant of Codex are you using?
macOS App
What feature would you like to see?
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, the Codex desktop app's prompt input does not support standard Markdown editor behaviours for lists. When writing structured prompts, I have to manually type - or 1. for every single list item. This breaks the "flow" of multi-line prompt engineering.
Describe the solution you'd like
I would like the prompt text area to support automatic list continuation:
- Trigger: If a line starts with a list marker (e.g., - , * , or 1. ).
- Action: When I hit Enter (or Shift+Enter), the next line should automatically start with the same list marker.
- Termination: If I hit Enter on an empty list item (e.g., just a - ), it should clear the marker and end the list.
Describe alternatives you've considered
- External editors: Writing prompts in VS Code or Obsidian and pasting them in, which adds friction to the workflow.
- Manual typing: Currently the only way, but it is slow and prone to formatting errors during complex prompt construction.
Additional context
This is a standard UX pattern in modern Markdown editors and chat apps, and would significantly improve the speed of composing prompts in the app.
Additional information
_No response_
2 Comments
This would help a lot for planning-heavy prompts. A common workflow is drafting acceptance criteria or stepwise task lists in markdown before handing them to the agent, and losing list structure makes those inputs harder to scan and easier to misread. Even basic ordered/unordered list support would improve prompt hygiene for real development sessions.
This feature request hasn't received enough upvotes, so it is being closed automatically. If you still feel this feature is needed, please open a new feature request with an updated title and description.