Codex Desktop dependencies fail to install; browser and computer-use plugins unavailable
Open 💬 6 comments Opened Jun 17, 2026 by felixmalupe
💡 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)?
26.611.62324
What subscription do you have?
ChatGPT Plus
What platform is your computer?
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19045.0 x64
What issue are you seeing?
Codex Desktop on Windows no longer exposes the in-app browser or computer-use tools, although they were available to me about one or two weeks ago.
Symptoms:
- In Settings > Browser, I see: “Integrated browser plugin unavailable”.
- In Settings > Computer Use, I see: “Computer use plugin unavailable”.
- Workspace dependencies show as “Not installed”.
- When I try to reinstall the dependencies, Codex shows: “Unable to reinstall Codex dependencies”.
- Codex also shows a warning saying that dependencies may need to be repaired.
Impact:
Codex cannot control the in-app browser or use computer control features. Tool discovery also fails to expose the expected Node REPL/browser/computer-use execution tools.
What I tried:
- Reinstalled Codex Desktop.
- Tried reinstalling workspace dependencies from Settings.
- Checked that Chrome, Notepad, and Word are listed as permanently allowed apps for computer use.
The issue persists after reinstalling Codex Desktop.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Feedback ID: 019ed6a4-ae6d-7332-9fb0-1a875086b61b
What is the expected behavior?
_No response_
Additional information
_No response_
6 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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After clearing AppData/Roaming and AppData/Local/OpenAI/Codex, the browser and computer-use plugins briefly reappeared. After closing and reopening Codex Desktop, they became unavailable again.
On disk, browser and chrome are present in version 26.611.62324, but computer-use remains at 26.527.31326. The config.toml notify entry still points to the old computer-use 26.527.31326 path. The AppData Local OpenAI Codex runtime folder is recreated, but the plugin availability does not persist after restart.
Thanks for the duplicate suggestions. I reviewed #27238, #27633, #28317, and #27152.
This issue is clearly related, especially to #27238, #27633, and #27152, but I am not sure it is an exact duplicate.
Additional detail from my case:
So this may share the same root cause as the linked issues, but the temporary recovery followed by failure after restart may be useful additional evidence. I will leave this open unless maintainers prefer to consolidate it under one specific issue.
I performed a full local reset:
After signing in again, the browser/computer-use plugins are still unavailable. This suggests the issue is not caused by the usual local Codex profile/cache folders.
I tested with a brand new Windows user profile on the same machine, same Codex version, and same ChatGPT account. In that fresh Windows profile, the browser and computer-use plugins appear correctly. This strongly suggests the issue is specific to my original Windows user profile, not the Codex installation globally or my account.
Computer Use still reports an internal @oai/sky export missing error in the fresh profile, but the plugins themselves are visible and the in-app browser works.
I found the root cause on my Windows profile.
The issue was caused by a stale/corrupted native extension state in:
C:\Users\<Windows username with an accented character>\AppData\Local\OpenAI\extension
The corrupted manifest contained mojibake in my Windows username path, e.g. the accented character in my username was stored as Fé instead of é.
Renaming the whole folder: extension.backup-20260618 then restarting Codex twice caused Codex to regenerate the extension state correctly. The in-app browser, Computer Use, and Chrome integration are now visible and remain active after restarts.
This explains why reinstalling Codex, resetting .codex, Roaming\Codex, and Local\OpenAI\Codex did not fix the issue: the broken state was stored in AppData\Local\OpenAI\extension.