Selection actions no longer appear for text selected inside Project Preview panel
What version of the Codex App are you using?
Codex Desktop 26.527.31326 (CFBundleVersion 3390)
Bundle identifier: com.openai.codex
What platform is your computer?
macOS 26.5 build 25F71
arm64What issue are you seeing?
Selection actions no longer appear when selecting text inside the right-side Project Preview / file preview panel.
In the chat transcript, selecting text still shows Codex's contextual selection menu with actions such as:
Add to conversationAsk in side chat
However, when selecting text inside the right-side Project Preview panel, the text is visually selected/highlighted, but the same Codex selection action menu does not appear. As a result, selected preview text cannot be added directly to the conversation from the selection UI.
This used to work previously. The regression appears global: it happens across all projects tested, not just one workspace or one file.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Open Codex Desktop on macOS.
- Open any project.
- Open a Markdown or HTML file in the right-side Project Preview / file preview panel.
- Select some text inside the rendered preview.
- Observe that the text is highlighted, but no Codex selection action menu appears.
- Select text in the normal chat transcript.
- Observe that the Codex selection action menu does appear there.
Actual behavior
Text selection works visually in the Project Preview panel, but the selection is not connected to Codex's contextual selection actions. The action menu shown in the chat transcript does not appear in the preview panel.
Expected behavior
Selecting text inside the Project Preview / file preview panel should show the same Codex selection action affordances as selecting text in the chat transcript, including adding the selected text to the conversation or asking about the selected content in side chat.
Scope
- Reproduces across all projects tested.
- Reproduces with Markdown and HTML preview content.
- Chat transcript selection actions still work.
- The issue appears specific to the right-side Project Preview / file preview surface.
Additional context
This is separate from composer input focus / caret issues. It is specifically about the Project Preview panel no longer exposing Codex's selection action menu for selected preview text.
Screenshots show the contrast clearly: selected text in the Project Preview panel is highlighted with no contextual action menu, while selected text in the chat transcript shows the action menu.
4 Comments
This is quite frustrating. I usually use the Codex app on Windows 11. I've never seen this behavior of selecting and "add to Task" before.
However, I recently saw it in the VSCode extension where it works perfectly. I was excited when it was a new update, only to find that it's no longer available in the app.
This kind of feedback is incredibly helpful for iterating on a plan to improve it, and it's the only thing I miss about Antigravity 😢.
Good news: this has now been addressed in the latest Codex app update, and the new implementation goes considerably further than simply restoring the previous selection menu.
Content can now be opened directly from the chat as structured, editable text blocks. You can add inline comments or annotations to specific passages and then submit all of your feedback together in one go.
The same review-and-comment workflow also works for documents opened in the text or file preview panel.
This is a substantial improvement over the previous “select text and add it to the task/conversation” workflow, especially when reviewing longer documents or providing feedback on multiple passages.
@Theoz001 Great! I can't wait for it :3
Clarification: after discussing the workflow further, this use case is broader than the selection-action regression tracked in this bug.
The requested capability is a first-class multi-annotation review mode for existing Markdown files: select several non-contiguous passages, attach an instruction to each, review the pending annotations, and submit them together with stable source-file anchors.
I filed that separately as feature request #37208:
This issue remains related because both involve the Project Preview surface, but restoring the one-shot selection menu would not by itself provide the requested document-review workflow.