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Codex Issues / #21440

Browser Use disappeared from Codex App despite enabled feature flags

Open 💬 5 comments Opened May 6, 2026 by dakeena
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.429.8261.0

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.22621.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

Browser Use / in-app browser is no longer available in Codex App. I was using it successfully a few days ago for ad-hoc UI testing. I restarted the app and confirmed I am on the latest version, but new sessions no longer expose Browser Use.

Environment:

  • Codex App: 26.429.8261.0
  • Codex CLI: codex-cli 0.128.0-alpha.1
  • Platform: Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.22621.0 x64
  • Running Codex with WSL

Current behavior:

  • Browser Use is missing from the session tool/plugin surface.
  • codex debug prompt-input 'test browser use' contains no Browser Use plugin/skill and no browser-use:browser skill.
  • The current model prompt exposes the GitHub plugin only.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Open Codex App on Windows.
  2. Start a new Codex session.
  3. Ask Codex to use Browser Use / the in-app browser for an ad-hoc UI check.
  4. Observe that Browser Use is not available.

Diagnostic commands I ran:

  • codex features list
  • codex debug prompt-input 'test browser use'

codex features list shows the relevant feature flags enabled:

  • browser_use stable true
  • in_app_browser stable true
  • computer_use stable true
  • plugins stable true
  • tool_search stable true

But Browser Use is still absent from the actual session/tool surface.

What is the expected behavior?

Browser Use should be available as a built-in/openai-bundled plugin, skill, or tool when browser_use and in_app_browser feature flags are enabled.

I expect to be able to use it for quick one-off exploratory UI checks while building features, without having to create formal Playwright tests.

Additional information

Current local state:

  • ~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-bundled exists but is empty.
  • Current bundled marketplace at ~/.codex/.tmp/bundled-marketplaces/openai-bundled only contains latex-tectonic.
  • Searches found no browser-client.mjs, no browser-use, and no *browser*.mjs under current ~/.codex cache or app install paths.
  • Old Browser Use state still exists under ~/.codex/browser/sessions/, which suggests Browser Use previously ran on this machine.

Older sessions from Apr 28 / May 1 exposed Browser Use as:

openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha1

with skill:

~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha1/skills/browser/SKILL.md

and script:

~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha1/scripts/browser-client.mjs

A previous Browser Use call successfully used the in-app browser backend:

await setupAtlasRuntime({ globals: globalThis, backend: 'iab' })

and returned metadata containing:

"codex/browserUse": true

Hypothesis: this looks like a bundled marketplace/plugin packaging regression or removal. The feature flags are still enabled, but the actual openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha1 plugin bundle is absent from disk and not advertised to the agent session.

View original on GitHub ↗

5 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 3 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

  • #20371
  • #19701

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welchwellbeing · 3 months ago

I’m seeing a related Windows regression on a newer Codex Desktop build.

Browser Use is present in my session, and the plugin bundle exists, but it cannot connect to the in-app browser backend.

Environment:

  • Codex Desktop: 26.506.3741.0
  • Codex CLI: codex-cli 0.130.0-alpha.5
  • Platform: Windows
  • Browser Use plugin present: openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha1
  • browser-client.mjs exists: true

Feature flags are enabled:

  • browser_use stable true
  • browser_use_external stable true
  • in_app_browser stable true
  • plugins stable true
  • tool_search stable true

Named pipes are visible locally: codex-browser-use-*

But Browser Use fails during backend setup with:

Failed to connect to browser-use backend "iab".
No Codex IAB backends were discovered.
Discovery diagnostics:
listedPipes=4, candidates=6, browsers=0, iabBrowsers=0,
failures=[
"discovered/connect/Error",
"discovered/connect/Error",
"discovered/connect/Error",
"discovered/connect/Error",
"legacy-iab/connect/Error",
"legacy-chrome/connect/Error"
]

This was working previously on this machine. Restarting Codex and rebooting Windows did not fix it. Temporarily pausing ESET real-time file protection also did not change the error.

1gaojer · 3 months ago

I hit a similar Browser Use disappearance on Windows after installing/uninstalling the Chrome and Browser plugins.

In my case, Browser Use still existed in the bundled marketplace, but my local Codex plugin state was suppressing it. The fix was to restore/enable the Browser Use plugin in these local Codex files:

  1. Restore the Browser Use plugin folder into the active plugin cache:

Source was the bundled marketplace copy:

Find this folder:

%USERPROFILE%\.codex\.tmp\bundled-marketplaces\openai-bundled\plugins\browser-use

Copy the whole browser-use folder’s contents into this folder:

%USERPROFILE%\.codex\plugins\cache\openai-bundled\browser-use\0.1.0-alpha2

If the destination folders do not exist, create them first.

  1. Edit %USERPROFILE%/.codex/config.toml and add or restore:

[plugins."browser-use@openai-bundled"]
enabled = true

  1. Edit %USERPROFILE%/.codex/.codex-global-state.json and make sure this flag is false:

"browser-use-bundled-plugin-auto-install-disabled": false

After restarting/reloading Codex, Browser Use became available again.

welchwellbeing · 3 months ago

Thanks, this pointed me in the right direction.

My config.toml already had:

[plugins."browser-use@openai-bundled"]
enabled = true

and I did not appear to have the browser-use-bundled-plugin-auto-install-disabled flag set in .codex-global-state.json.

The issue was that my active plugin cache was incomplete/out of date. The bundled marketplace had Browser Use 0.1.0-alpha2, but my active cache initially only had/used the older or partial cache state.

I restored it by mirroring:

~/.codex/.tmp/bundled-marketplaces/openai-bundled/plugins/browser-use

into:

~/.codex/plugins/cache/openai-bundled/browser-use/0.1.0-alpha2

After that, Browser Use connected again and I could open Zapier successfully in the in-app browser.

One extra detail: after restarting Codex, the 0.1.0-alpha2 cache folder existed but was incomplete. It had scripts/node_modules, but was missing scripts/browser-client.mjs and some nested dependencies. Mirroring the whole bundled plugin folder into the active cache fixed it.

Phuc182219 · 3 months ago

I’m seeing the same issue on Windows Store Codex.

Broken machine

Codex app package:

OpenAI.Codex_26.513.4821.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
Desktop release: 26.513.40821

Feature flags in ~/.codex/config.toml are enabled:

[features]
browser_use = true
in_app_browser = true
js_repl = true
multi_agent = true

But the desktop log reports:

browser_use_availability_resolved available=false browserPane=true platform=Windows reason=statsig-disabled release=26.513.40821

Bundled marketplace only contains latex:

bundled_plugins_runtime_marketplace_written pluginCount=1 pluginNames=["latex"]

Runtime bin only contains rg.exe; no node_repl.exe is downloaded/selected:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\OpenAI\Codex\bin\...\rg.exe

Browser tool surface is missing:

node_repl / mcp__node_repl__js not exposed

I tried a local cache reset by renaming:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\OpenAI.Codex_2p2nqsd0c76g0\LocalCache\Roaming\Codex
%LOCALAPPDATA%\OpenAI\Codex\bin

After restart, Codex rebuilt only rg.exe and still wrote only the latex bundled marketplace. Browser Use remained unavailable.

Working machine comparison

Another Windows machine on the same app package/version works:

OpenAI.Codex_26.513.4821.0_x64__2p2nqsd0c76g0
Desktop release: 26.513.40821

Working machine log:

browser_use_availability_resolved available=true browserPane=true platform=Windows reason=available release=26.513.40821

Working machine has:

nodeReplPath=...\node_repl.exe
nodeVersionStatus=ok
browser_use_iab_backend_startup_ready backend=iab
mcp__node_repl__js exposed
openai-bundled browser/chrome plugins present

So this looks like Browser Use is being gated off or the bundled Browser Use runtime is not being delivered for one app/profile, even though the visible local feature flags are enabled.