Add support to view diffs in the VSCode diff viewer

Resolved 💬 15 comments Opened Aug 30, 2025 by thetinygoat Closed Sep 3, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (gpeal, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What feature would you like to see?

I love the new codex IDE integration, i feel like i finally have an alternative to claude code, i think the one missing feature that is holding me back is the diff viewing expeirence isn't nice. It shows the entire diff in the sidebar and its not even expandable to full screen, making it hard to see what was actually changed.
I rarely run in agent mode, i like to approve every change made to my codebase so i think this is a must have feature.

Are you interested in implementing this feature?

_No response_

Additional information

_No response_

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15 Comments

gpeal contributor · 10 months ago

You can click "View changes" to view the full diff in an editor view.

<img width="1006" height="208" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/78d3858d-624d-4e0d-ac44-f64b62481f39" />

bhack · 10 months ago

@gpeal I there an API avaialable in VSCODE for copilot chat like diff presentation?

thetinygoat · 10 months ago

@gpeal Don't see the option to do so. I was referring to the diff, when working collaboratively with the agent and allowing or rejecting changes. What you are referring to seems like viewing the final diff after the agent is done.

<img width="612" height="374" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/94fc1fde-c10c-4129-9150-57ac3d2aa909" />

hee-dongdong · 10 months ago

@gpeal

You meant the final diff after the agent is done. Actually we want to see the changes view "before" the agents editing the code, in order to thoroughly review what agent is going to do. In fact this function was already implemented in Claude Code, but not in Codex.

jamie-cogitait · 10 months ago

Yes, this is a major usability drawback, coming from Claude Code. If I'm reviewing changes as Codex progresses, I'm confined to viewing them in a tiny window that can't be expanded or broken out.

bhack · 10 months ago

This is closed we have another diff related open ticket at https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/2998. I don't know if we could converge on that one.

rockmandash · 10 months ago

This is NUMBER ONE reason why I will quit codex, referred issue doesn't properly describe the issue like current one.

crankycyclops · 7 months ago

This does not work for me either.

spider853 · 5 months ago

Very frustrating, I'll probably switch to Claude just because of this, even if I heard Codex is better at coding...

matlizard · 4 months ago

I would like to use and sub to Codex too, but this diff missing feature blocks me from passing from Cursor to Codex.

oameye · 4 months ago

Same here.

TheAndi · 3 months ago

At our University we are switching to Windsurf because of this. Please FIX! Thanks!

xxxsteve · 2 months ago

This is so bad

jim208 · 28 days ago

+1