Codex Desktop Browser Bridge fails on Windows: windows sandbox failed: spawn setup refresh
Codex Desktop Browser Bridge fails on Windows after app restart and fresh thread.
When attempting to initialize Browser Bridge through the trusted node_repl/browser skill path, node_repl crashes with:
node_repl kernel exited unexpectedly
node_repl diagnostics: {"kernel_pid":25712,"kernel_status":"running","kernel_stderr_tail":"windows sandbox failed: spawn setup refresh","reason":"stdout_eof","stream_error":null}
Another attempt produced the same error with a different kernel_pid.
Trying the bundled browser client directly from local Node produced:
Error: privileged native pipe bridge is not available; browser-client is not trusted
I understand the local Node error may be expected, but the trusted node_repl Browser Bridge path is failing. This prevents agents from connecting to real Chrome/listing tabs/using DOM control. Windows screen/mouse fallback works only in sessions where those tools are exposed, but other sessions do not have that fallback.
Environment: Windows 11, Codex Desktop, Chrome installed with Codex Chrome extension.
Repro steps:
- Restart Codex Desktop.
- Open a fresh thread.
- Ask Browser skill to initialize Browser Bridge / list real Chrome tabs.
- node_repl exits with the sandbox error above.
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Additional detail: this is not limited to Browser Bridge initialization.
A minimal node_repl call also fails:
nodeRepl.write("ok")
Result:
node_repl kernel exited unexpectedly
node_repl diagnostics: {"kernel_pid":9592,"kernel_status":"running","kernel_stderr_tail":"windows sandbox failed: spawn setup refresh","reason":"stdout_eof","stream_error":null}
So the failure appears to be at node_repl startup/runtime level, before Browser Bridge code runs.
this is now fixed
Im still having this problem. codex says this:
"Direct in-app browser-control tool is still not exposed to me.
Node/browser bridge still crashes with the same Windows ACL sandbox error before it can even fetch.
I could not actually use the built-in browser debug tool in this session because its required Node browser bridge is broken under the current sandbox"