Codex App UI treats macOS filesystem root `/` as no workspace selected
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.608.12217
What subscription do you have?
Not relevant to this UI-only workspace-selection bug.
What platform is your computer?
Darwin 27.0.0 arm64 arm
What issue are you seeing?
In the Codex App on macOS, selecting the filesystem root / as the local workspace/cwd causes the App UI to behave as though no directory was selected. The native directory picker accepts / and closes, but the selected workspace is not retained/displayed as an active workspace.
Selecting a normal directory such as /Users works. In the Windows Codex App, selecting the drive root C:\ also works.
This appears to be specifically a Codex App frontend workspace-picker/state-validation bug, not a Codex CLI or app-server cwd execution bug: the selection is lost/rejected in the App UI before any CLI/backend operation is involved.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Open the Codex App on macOS.
- Start a new local chat/project and open the workspace/cwd folder picker.
- In the macOS folder picker, navigate to and select the filesystem root
/. - Confirm the selection.
- Observe that the Codex App UI behaves as if no workspace/directory was selected.
- Repeat with
/Users; it is retained correctly.
What is the expected behavior?
The App should retain / as the selected workspace/cwd and display it as the active workspace. If using / has security or permission implications, the App may warn the user or default it to read-only, but it should not interpret the valid root path as “no directory selected.”
Additional information
A likely place to inspect is frontend path normalization or empty-selection validation. POSIX root / must remain / when trailing separators are normalized; it must not become an empty string. This is only a hypothesis—the key report is that the App UI rejects/loses the selection while Windows drive root selection works.