Codex Desktop on Windows is extremely slow even when the computer is fine

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

• #22912
• #22352
• #21948
• #22991
• #22085

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I can reproduce something very similar.

Environment:

• Windows 11
• Codex Desktop App
• WSL2 enabled
• Defender only (no VPN, proxy, or ZScaler)

What I observed:

• Codex Desktop was extremely slow, even for a simple prompt like "hi".
• The same account worked fine in the VS Code Codex extension and in the web app.
• Logging out/in, creating new chats, resetting the app, and reinstalling did not permanently fix it.

Interesting finding:

• After a clean reinstall and deleting the .codex folder, the desktop app was fast again.
• As soon as I enabled WSL and restarted the app, the slowdown returned immediately.
• Disabling WSL makes the issue disappear again.

This feels related to the Desktop App's WSL integration rather than model latency or account/network issues.

Happy to provide app version, WSL distro/version, or logs if that helps.

I experience the exact same issue on the same setup - WSL2, Windows 11. Extremely slow. A simple command takes over 1h to complete.

Exactly same issue here when running codex app on Windows 11 with WSL2 agent. A few weeks ago it was fast (same as codex CLI in WSL). Now, as reported earlier, a simple "hi" with gpt-5.5 fast takes several minutes in "Thinking". Every single interaction has a huge delay for no good reason. Codex App is pretty much unusable.

My local version is 26.601.21317.

For the past 3 or 4 days, the Codex app on Windows 11/WSL2 has been running extremely slowly. A simple command takes several minutes to respond, and a routine development task that used to take less than 10 minutes now takes several hours! Please make this a priority.

I'm seeing the same thing. It appears it's not just prompts, but the entire app is massively slower when WSL backend is enabled.

seeing the same thing. App is much slower when WSL backend is enabled than cli in wsl2

A similar issue with Codex Desktop on Windows + WSL 2.

At first I suspected this was caused by WSL filesystem performance when working under /mnt/c, because Codex seems especially slow around filesystem-heavy operations: listing folders, reading files, scanning project contents, etc.

But in my case the actual code repositories are already inside the Linux filesystem, under ~/projects, and df -T ~/projects shows they are on ext4, not the Windows-mounted /mnt/c filesystem.

One interesting detail: the Codex Desktop session/thread workspace itself appears to be created under a Windows path, for example:

/mnt/c/Users/ivan/Documents/Codex/...

and WSL reports that path as filesystem type 9p.

So my current suspicion is that even when the real repo is on fast WSL ext4, Codex Desktop may still be doing some agent/session/scratch/log/context filesystem work through the slower Windows-mounted path. That could explain why ordinary operations like reading files, listing folders, or gathering context feel much slower in Codex Desktop than expected.

It would be useful if Codex Desktop could either:

• create its WSL session/scratch/workspace files inside the WSL Linux filesystem, not under /mnt/c
• expose where those files are being stored
• or document/configure the location so Windows + WSL users can avoid the slow path

In short: this does not look like my repositories being stored in the wrong place. They are on WSL ext4. The slowdown may be related to Codex Desktop’s own workspace/session files or how the desktop app bridges into WSL.

Facing the same issue on Windows 11 + WSL2. It takes several minutes to complete even very basic tasks.

I can confirm the same. I noticed that problem around a week ago or even more. CLI on WSL2 is working totally normal, while Codex Desktop is slow as hell even with Fast Mode enabled and on brand new projects.

My workaround for now is using codex native agent and add a ssh connection to my wsl in the app. Seems to work for now 😅

My workaround for now is using codex native agent and add a ssh connection to my wsl in the app. Seems to work for now 😅

you can execute commands in WSL via the wsl.exe command in powershell. would that do the trick?

Codex now is a prime example of what would happen if use AI to develope an app for a period of time. This app now is a completely useless ball of stutters and freezes. One wrong key pressed, enjoy 15 seconds freeze. Bravo, OpenAI, bravo! I've never seen an app freezing that much, and I've been using Visual Studio since forever.

As people here already mentioned, configuring Codex to connect to WSL via SSH works without issues. It's clearly something with the communication between app and agent.

The most recent update seems to be bad again. Even ssh to a linux host causes major stutters after most prompts.

Codex now is a prime example of what would happen if use AI to develope an app for a period of time. This app now is a completely useless ball of stutters and freezes. One wrong key pressed, enjoy 15 seconds freeze. Bravo, OpenAI, bravo! I've never seen an app freezing that much, and I've been using Visual Studio since forever.

I don't think this is inherent whatsoever. I think it's a decision-making issue. Imagine having all those resources and still choosing, in what can only be in the interest of time, to use Electron in 2026

It's a bit better sicne the last update. But still, when you open a new chat and start typing you are still obligated to tolerate an absolutely insane freeze.

I've found that uninstalling, wiping the .codex dir from your user home and reinstalling worked to restore fast WSL operation. I suspect as they went to use the new bubblewrap approach the existing config messed it up.

@jmitek unfortunately didn't help in my case. I tried the same prompt on the project on Windows and macOS (both have powerful hardware). macOS was much faster :(

7 vs 25 minutes, this is insane