Codex macOS app launches but never creates a window; process remains running-active-NotVisible

Resolved 💬 0 comments Opened May 7, 2026 by velocats Closed May 8, 2026

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

Codex app version: 26.506.20924

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.4.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

The Codex macOS desktop app fails to open on a new Apple Silicon Mac. The app appears to launch successfully from macOS’s perspective, but no UI window is ever created. The Dock icon bounces / the process starts, but Codex remains invisible and unusable.

This appears similar to issue #11303, where the app hangs before first window creation. That issue describes the same basic behavior: Dock icon bounces indefinitely, no application window is created, no error dialog appears, and Electron startup flags do not help.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Reproduction steps
Install Codex macOS desktop app.
Move Codex to /Applications.
Launch with Finder, Spotlight, or:
open -a Codex
Observe that the Dock icon bounces / process starts.
No Codex window appears.
AppleScript reports no windows:
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Codex" to get {name of windows, position of windows, size of windows}'
macOS logs show running-active-NotVisible.

Reproduces consistently.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should create and show its main macOS application window, allow sign-in if needed, and allow the user to select/open a project.

Additional information

Relevant diagnostic output:

$ uname -m
arm64

$ defaults read /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Info CFBundleShortVersionString
26.506.20924

$ defaults read /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Info CFBundleVersion
2565

$ file /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex
/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

Gatekeeper and code signing:

$ spctl --assess --type execute -vv /Applications/Codex.app
/Applications/Codex.app: accepted
source=Notarized Developer ID
origin=Developer ID Application: OpenAI OpCo, LLC (2DC432GLL2)

$ codesign --verify --deep --strict --verbose=2 /Applications/Codex.app
/Applications/Codex.app: valid on disk
/Applications/Codex.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement
Actual behavior

Launching Codex from Finder, Spotlight, open -a Codex, or directly from the binary does not show a window.

The process appears to start, but no UI is created:

$ open -a Codex

$ sleep 5

$ ps aux | grep -i "[C]odex"
<redacted_user> 24679 0.0 0.0 410060096 32 ?? S 3:22PM 0:00.01 /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex

$ osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Codex" to get {name of windows, position of windows, size of windows}'
,,

In another attempt, the process was gone by the time System Events checked it:

System Events got an error: Can’t get process "Codex". (-1728)

macOS unified logs repeatedly show the process launching successfully, but staying not visible:

Successfully spawned Codex[...] because launch job demand
Received state update for ... app<application.com.openai.codex...>, running-active-NotVisible
ApplicationManager: Checked in app : Codex
App: Codex, ready, updating active tracking timer

Representative log excerpt:

launchd: Successfully spawned Codex[...] because launch job demand
gamepolicyd: Received state update for ... app<application.com.openai.codex...>, running-active-NotVisible
CoreServicesUIAgent: LAUNCH: ... com.openai.codex starting stopped process
loginwindow: Got App URL: file:///Applications/Codex.app/
loginwindow: ApplicationManager: Checked in app : Codex
gamepolicyd: Received state update for ... running-active-NotVisible

This matches the local behavior: the app starts but never creates a visible window.

Troubleshooting already attempted

The following did not resolve the issue:

Force quit / pkill all Codex processes
Reinstall Codex
Confirm Apple Silicon app build
Confirm Gatekeeper acceptance
Confirm code signature validity
Remove local Codex cache/state
Remove saved application state
Remove preferences plist
Launch directly from /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex
Launch with Electron flags:

--disable-gpu
--no-sandbox
--enable-logging=stderr

Launch with temporary clean Electron profile:

--user-data-dir=/tmp/codex-clean-profile

Launch with temporary HOME:

HOME=~/Desktop/codex-test-home

Temporarily move ~/.ssh/config
Re-register LaunchServices entry
Eject installer DMG and verify launch from /Applications path

Commands used for local state cleanup:

pkill -f Codex 2>/dev/null || true

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Codex
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.openai.codex
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Codex
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.openai.codex
rm -rf ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.openai.codex
rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.openai.codex.savedState
rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/com.openai.codex.plist
rm -rf /tmp/codex-clean-profile

Electron-style launch attempts:

/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex \
--user-data-dir=/tmp/codex-clean-profile \
--disable-gpu \
--enable-logging=stderr

and:

HOME=~/Desktop/codex-test-home \
/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex \
--user-data-dir=/tmp/codex-clean-profile-2 \
--disable-gpu \
--no-sandbox \
--enable-logging=stderr

Both resulted in no visible window.

Quarantine / App Translocation notes

Initially, the app had quarantine attributes:

$ xattr /Applications/Codex.app
com.apple.macl
com.apple.quarantine

After granting Terminal appropriate macOS permissions, quarantine removal succeeded. There were also earlier logs showing App Translocation from the mounted installer volume:

/private/.../T/AppTranslocation/.../Codex.app
file:///Volumes/Codex%20Installer/Codex.app/

After ejecting the installer volume and launching from /Applications, the process path became:

/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/MacOS/Codex

However, the behavior did not change: Codex still launched as running-active-NotVisible and created no windows.

Codex app logs

Expected app log folder was not created:

open ~/Library/Logs/com.openai.codex

Result:

The file /Users/<redacted_user>/Library/Logs/com.openai.codex does not exist.

This suggests the app may be hanging before Codex’s own logging initializes.

Additional observation: bundled CLI path also hangs

The CLI bundled inside the app also appears to hang:

/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Resources/codex --help

This did not print help output and required Ctrl+C.

Launching without arguments also did not produce useful interaction:

/Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Resources/codex

Suggested area to investigate

Based on the evidence, this does not appear to be:

Wrong architecture
Gatekeeper rejection
Invalid code signature
Normal quarantine block after cleanup
SSH config issue
User-data/profile corruption
Window positioned off-screen

The app appears to launch and check in with macOS, but either never creates a BrowserWindow or hangs before the renderer/UI becomes visible.

Potentially relevant area:

Electron bootstrap / BrowserWindow creation
Desktop wrapper startup path
Early app initialization before Codex app log directory creation
Interaction between packaged desktop app and bundled CLI/runtime

View original on GitHub ↗