Chrome plugin installed but Chrome backend is not exposed; only In-app Browser appears

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

Codex Desktop 26.609.3341.0 Plugin/cache version observed: 26.609.30741

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Plus

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64 Locale: pt-BR

What issue are you seeing?

The Chrome plugin and Codex Chrome Extension appear installed/enabled, and extension-host.exe is running, but Codex Desktop never exposes the Chrome backend to threads.

In a Codex thread, agent.browsers.list() only returns:

• Codex In-app Browser (type: iab)

Both of these fail:

• agent.browsers.get("extension") => Browser is not available: extension
• agent.browsers.get("chrome") => Browser is not available: chrome

The Chrome extension UI shows Connected, and the Codex Desktop plugin page also shows the Chrome plugin installed/enabled. However, Codex cannot access or claim current Chrome tabs.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Install/enable the Chrome plugin in Codex Desktop.
2. Install/enable the Codex Chrome Extension in Chrome.
3. Restart both Chrome and Codex Desktop.
4. Open a Chrome tab.
5. In Codex, ask it to access the current Chrome tab.
6. Observe that Chrome is not available as a browser backend.

I also tried:

• reinstalling the Chrome extension
• uninstalling/reinstalling the Codex Chrome plugin
• clearing a corrupted plugin cache manually
• restarting Chrome and Codex Desktop multiple times
• opening Chrome via scripts/open-chrome-window.js
• running Chrome and Codex as administrator
• creating a new thread
• setting Chrome as default browser

The result is always the same: only the in-app browser backend appears.

What is the expected behavior?

Codex Desktop should expose the Chrome plugin backend so that agent.browsers.list() includes a Chrome/extension backend, and agent.browsers.get("extension") or the documented Chrome backend should allow Codex to list/claim open Chrome tabs.

Additional information

Chrome extension version: 1.1.5
Chrome profile: Default
Chrome plugin/cache version: 26.609.30741

extension-host.exe is running from:
C:\Users\******\.codex\plugins\cache\openai-bundled\chrome\latest\extension-host\windows\x64\extension-host.exe

The native host manifest exists:
C:\Users\******\AppData\Local\OpenAI\extension\com.openai.codexextension.json

Direct registry check confirms:
HKCU\Software\Google\Chrome\NativeMessagingHosts\com.openai.codexextension
(default value points to the manifest above)

Potential related issue:
scripts/check-native-host-manifest.js appears to falsely report the registry key as missing on pt-BR Windows, because it expects the default registry value name "(Default)", while reg query /ve outputs "(padrão)" on this system.

Even after the native-host file updated to a current PID and extension-host.exe was running, Codex still only exposed the iab backend.