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Codex Issues / #30529

Pasted clipboard screenshots are not available to the agent when using WSL

Open 💬 6 comments Opened Jun 29, 2026 by Oleksander861986
💡 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)?

26.623.61825; also reproduced on every recent Codex App version/update I used during the last ~3 weeks

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro 5x

What platform is your computer?

Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.26100.0 x64; Windows with WSL2 workspace

What issue are you seeing?

When the Codex App is configured to work through WSL on Windows, screenshots pasted from the Windows clipboard are not available to the agent.

I take or copy a screenshot on Windows and paste it into Codex. From the user side, the paste action appears to work, but the Codex agent does not receive the screenshot as image context/attachment.

The agent behaves as if no image was provided.

There is no clear error message shown to the user. Text clipboard paste works normally. The problem appears to affect pasted screenshots/images when the active workspace is using WSL.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Open Codex App on Windows.
  2. Open or configure a project where Codex works through WSL.
  3. Take a screenshot on Windows or copy an image to the Windows clipboard.
  4. Paste the screenshot/image into Codex.
  5. Ask the agent to inspect or describe the pasted screenshot.
  6. The agent cannot see the image and responds as if no screenshot/image was provided.

As a workaround, I have to ask the agent to manually search for the screenshot in Windows temporary files through WSL-mounted paths, for example under /mnt/c/Users/.../AppData/Local/Temp/.... This workaround is unreliable and inconvenient.

What is the expected behavior?

When I paste a screenshot or image from the Windows clipboard into Codex, the agent should receive it as an image attachment/context.

This should work even when the active project/workspace is running through WSL.

Additional information

This has reproduced for me on all recent Codex App versions/updates I used during the last ~3 weeks, including version 26.623.61825.

The issue is specifically about pasted clipboard screenshots/images not being passed to the agent context when using a WSL workspace. The workaround of looking for temporary Windows screenshot files from inside WSL is not reliable and should not be necessary.

No personal information is included here.

View original on GitHub ↗

6 Comments

github-actions[bot] contributor · 2 months ago

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

  • #30305

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Chrrxs · 1 month ago

ChatGPT Desktop Feedback ID: 019f70da-0380-73c3-8c85-c5fc821660e2 for further context on this issue, hopefully it's resolved soon, the workaround is passing the windows path instead of the screenshot.

noxhoej · 24 days ago

Also ChatGPT Desktop Feedback ID: 019fc95c-4d8a-7e53-8412-5f3ccc546458.

Pretty big problem that the WSL agent cannot access any screenshots added to prompts.

It seems that the agent running in WSL was actually able to circumvent the problem when asked.
But also added that this app integration bug should really be fixed: 🧑‍🔧

<img width="578" height="484" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8f87362a-15f6-4913-963c-6af4e079f13f" />

teolaz · 6 days ago

Not ideal, but creating a 'AGENTS.md' file inside /mnt/c/Users/{user}/.codex on WSL with this prompt:

## WSL

- This is a WSL environment, meaning that every path presented to you should be translated as its relative linux mounted point.
  es: when you see C:\... you should translate the path to /mnt/c/...

<img width="3033" height="590" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/89cf77c1-6921-4dad-85cc-a496c594eddb" />

solved the problem at the cost of some tokens...

<img width="2750" height="1573" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/adeaa7d7-7638-43f1-8ebc-f44f9321412b" />

noxhoej · 6 days ago
Not ideal, but creating a 'AGENTS.md' file inside /mnt/c/Users/{user}/.codex on WSL with this prompt

Yeah, Codex actually managed to figure this out by itself at some point.
And when I asked it to remember this for future chats, it automatically added its own very similar snippet to AGENTS.md (Whose contents are also visible & editable under "Settings → Personalization → Custom instructions" in the desktop app).

So it "works" now, but as you say, not ideal - token & performance wise.
Plus that it doesn't work "out of the box". Took me a while to get past this major stumbling block🙄

<img width="614" height="217" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/65d8905e-484e-44b2-9b45-800eb927de6e" />

rdvo · 1 day ago

Still reproduces here on:

  • Codex Desktop 26.820.7780.0
  • Windows 11 Pro 10.0.26200, build 26200
  • WSL 2.7.12.0, kernel 6.18.33.2-2
  • WSL-backed task

Pasting a screenshot into the composer appears to succeed from the user's side, but after sending, the agent sometimes receives no usable image and reports that the clipboard image is unavailable or expired. Saving the same clipboard image as a PNG/JPG and attaching it from a stable path works.

A reliable local workaround has been:

  1. Save the Windows clipboard bitmap to a durable location such as C:\Users\<user>\.codex\clipboard_images\<timestamp>.png.
  2. Give the WSL agent the mapped path /mnt/c/Users/<user>/.codex/clipboard_images/<timestamp>.png.
  3. The agent can then inspect the image normally.

That confirms image understanding and basic cross-filesystem access are working. The fragile part appears to be the pasted-image handoff or lifetime. The desktop app should stage clipboard images in a task-scoped durable/shared path, or pass the image bytes through directly, before the message is dispatched.

#27552 contains closely related detail about Windows temp paths and WSL visibility/lifetime.