Support custom storage path for Codex Desktop Chats/projectless workspaces

Open 💬 8 comments Opened May 26, 2026 by JordanQD

💡 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)?

26.519.41501

What subscription do you have?

GPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26300.0 x64

What issue are you seeing?

Codex Desktop currently appears to save projectless chats/workspaces under a default path such as:

C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Codex\<date>\<conversation>

On my machine, my actual Documents location is not this path. I would like to store Codex chats and generated projectless conversation files under a custom directory, for example:

C:\Users\<user>\Data\Codex

However, I could not find a supported config.toml option for changing the Chats/session storage path.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Feedback ID: 019e629e-1e2e-7012-adb1-0206075bc057

When starting a conversation without opening a project, Codex Desktop creates/saves conversation workspace files under the default Documents-based Codex directory.

This is inconvenient when: The user's Windows Documents folder has been redirected elsewhere.
The user wants Codex data stored on another drive or under a dedicated data directory.
The user wants all Codex chats, generated files, and projectless workspaces in a predictable custom location.
The default path is not suitable for backup, sync, privacy, or disk organization reasons.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should provide a supported way to configure where local Chats/projectless conversation workspaces are stored.

For example, one of these would work:

chat_storage_dir = "C:\\Users\\<user>\\Data\\Codex\\Chats"

or:

projectless_workspace_dir = "C:\\Users\\<user>\\Data\\Codex\\Workspaces"

or a Codex Desktop settings UI option such as:

Default chat/workspace storage location

Additional information

I understand that CODEX_HOME may move the broader Codex home directory, but that is a global data/config relocation. It would be useful to have a narrower, documented setting specifically for Codex Desktop Chats/projectless workspace storage.

View original on GitHub ↗

8 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 1 month ago

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

#24222

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nos1609 · 1 month ago

Same problem as there https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/20880
looks like definitely an architectural design flaw, starting to annoying already on daily basis manually cleaning up those undesirables residues leftovers

miangino · 1 month ago

When is this going to be applied? It is very annoying to manually have to create the new folders every time you want to create a new project.

Yiivgeny · 1 month ago

My ~/Documents folder is synced with iCloud, so Codex projectless workspaces under ~/Documents/Codex trigger unwanted uploads/downloads. Please add a setting to change this base directory.

IK-R-S · 1 month ago

Do something @kkahadze-oai

dsteinbock · 29 days ago

@etraut-openai Some of the issues you duped to this one have a slightly different scope. This one is about the default folder for project-less workspaces. The others are about the default folder for new project workspaces created via 'Add new project > Start from scratch'.

Arguably one setting could cover both but I wanted to flag since this issue is now missing the 'new project' feature scope.

montanaflynn · 27 days ago

I couldn't believe this wasn't an option but after digging through settings I gave up and found this and the several duplicate issues.

lancy69 · 3 days ago

For now, my solution is to do everything in projects with folders I created manually until the location of ~/Documents/Codex can be configured. 😂