Add Word-wise Deletion in TUI
Resolved 💬 4 comments Opened Sep 8, 2025 by ajamous Closed Sep 11, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (pakrym-oai, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
Summary
In Codex CLI on macOS, pressing Option+Delete (⌥⌫) currently deletes only a single character. This diverges from expected macOS behavior, where ⌥⌫ deletes the previous word and accelerates when held.
Current Behavior
- ⌥⌫ deletes one character at a time.
- No support for word-wise deletion or fast repeat while held.
Expected Behavior
- ⌥⌫ deletes the previous word.
- Holding the keys rapidly deletes multiple words (sentence-level speed), consistent with native macOS editors and tools like Claude Code.
Motivation
Word-wise deletion is a standard editing shortcut on macOS. Adding it to Codex CLI improves text editing efficiency and aligns with user expectations.
Steps to Reproduce
- On macOS (Terminal.app or iTerm2), launch Codex CLI.
- Type a sentence in the input field.
- Press Option+Delete (⌥⌫).
- Observe that only a single character is deleted.
Environment
- macOS Sonoma/Sequoia (14/15)
- Codex CLI (TUI): latest
Are you interested in implementing this feature?
_No response_
Additional information
_No response_
4 Comments
On iTerm, have you tried adding "Natural text editing text preset"?
<img width="1077" height="678" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4d99fa4a-c54c-4ec1-9ac8-8e3a0e09aa00" />
Does word-wise deletion work in other apps in the terminal?
In Terminal.app, settings > profiles > keyboard > "use option as meta" — is this enabled? I think it has to be for opt-delete to delete a whole word.
This issue has been resolved in the latest codex cli version. Thanks!
In case someone like me is using Ghostty and thought it's the Codex CLI responsible for the issue. Recent version of Ghostty changes default behavior, and we need to make a workaround:
https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/8677