Error: Permission denied (os error 13) – Codex seems to need $HOME write permission

This is expected, we store session logs in ~/.codex/sessions and have some logic to update config.toml.

Well, this is not what I personally expected as a first codex experience, given that on macOS $HOME is not the recommended default location for app configuration, data, etc.

They are correct, this should probably be changed to $XDG_DATA_HOME/Codex or $XDG_DATA_HOME/Application Support/Codex on MacOS.

Most users won't have permissions issues with $HOME/.codex, but the above change would create more consistent behavior for MacOS users.

macOS does not follow the X Desktop Group specifications.
The default location is supposed to be ~/Library/Application Support/Codex.

Ah, you are correct. I was working from an Apple developer thread that seemed to indicate that $XDG_DATA_HOME pointed to ~/Library. Tested on my Macbook Sequoia 15.5, doesn't exist. I mostly work on Linux so I didn't double check.

So yes, ~/Library/Application Support/Codex would be the most normal place to store files in a MacOS environment.

Notably, you can set $CODEX_HOME in your shell to redirect this. I prefer these things to end up in ~/.config so I had to set that anyway. I haven't tested yet, but seems like it should work according to the readme?

I still second defaulting to Application Support on MacOS installs, as that is the most consistent MacOS place to store app data.

Thanks for the bug report. Codex is working as intended here, so I'm going to close.

what worked for me on MAC OS is getting ownership of the .codex folder below is what I did
sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/.codex
chmod -R 700 ~/.codex

I've been experiencing a related issue on macOS with npm install -g @openai/codex@latest. The installation fails with:

npm error code ENOTEMPTY
npm error errno -66
npm error ENOTEMPTY: directory not empty, rename '/Users/rares/.nvm/versions/node/v24.1.0/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex' -> '/Users/rares/.nvm/versions/node/v24.1.0/lib/node_modules/@openai/.codex-Qs27cSw0'

Workaround: I have to manually clean up before installing:

rm -rf /Users/rares/.nvm/versions/node/v24.1.0/lib/node_modules/@openai/codex
npm install -g @openai/codex@latest

However, there's an additional issue: the installed executable lacks execute permissions (644 instead of 755), which causes Permission denied errors. After installation, I have to manually fix it:

chmod +x /Users/rares/.nvm/versions/node/v24.1.0/bin/codex

This suggests the npm package installation process may not be properly preserving file permissions, or there's a cleanup/upgrade issue when updating the package. This compounds the existing permission/directory issues mentioned in this thread.

what worked for me on MAC OS is getting ownership of the .codex folder below is what I did sudo chown -R $(whoami) ~/.codex chmod -R 700 ~/.codex

I am on arch, and this helped me, thank you.