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Codex Issues / #34048

Intel Mac desktop app titlebar toolbar controls are obscured

Open 💬 4 comments Opened Jul 18, 2026 by Michael-IT001

Summary

On an Intel Mac running macOS 13, the Codex/ChatGPT desktop app titlebar layout appears broken: the three toolbar controls next to the macOS window controls are visually obscured/crowded and difficult to read or use.

Environment

  • OS: macOS 13
  • Platform: macOS
  • Hardware/chip: Intel Mac
  • App: Codex/ChatGPT desktop app after the recent unified desktop update
  • App version: unknown / can provide if needed

Current behavior

The titlebar area does not reserve enough clear space for the toolbar controls. In the screenshot, the three controls near the top-left titlebar area appear blocked/covered/crowded.

Expected behavior

The titlebar controls should remain fully visible and clickable, with proper spacing from the native macOS traffic-light window buttons and no overlap/cropping, on Intel Macs running macOS 13.

Screenshot

<img width="252" height="50" alt="Intel Mac titlebar toolbar controls obscured" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/988c811f-f2f8-4e30-b6b1-e3cb13de334a" />

Related

Possibly related to #29562, but this report is for the Intel Mac titlebar toolbar controls rather than only the login-window traffic-light safe area.

View original on GitHub ↗

4 Comments

Michael-IT001 · 1 month ago

Screenshot for reference:

<img width="252" height="50" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/988c811f-f2f8-4e30-b6b1-e3cb13de334a" />

shriza1991 · 1 month ago

Hi there! I'd love to help out with this bug. Could you please assign this issue to me? I’ll go over the contributing guidelines and submit a PR soon.

Michael-IT001 · 1 month ago

Thanks for offering to help. I don’t have permission to assign issues in this repo, but feel free to open a PR if you find a fix. Maintainers can decide assignment/review.

Michael-IT001 · 1 month ago

Detailed Technical Analysis & Workaround Solution

After inspecting the main process window positioning logic in the macOS desktop app, we identified the root cause of this titlebar control truncation issue on macOS Retina displays:

  1. Root Cause:

The desktop app dynamically recalculates the Y coordinate of the native window buttons (trafficLightPosition / setWindowButtonPosition) using a linear zoom formula:
``javascript
trafficLightPosition: { x: 16, y: Math.round((46 * zoom - 14) / 2) }
`
At **100% or higher zoom levels**, this pushes the Y coordinate to 16px or higher, causing the top portion of the window control buttons and adjacent titlebar area to be clipped by the top window boundary. When zoomed out to **90%**, y evaluates to 14px`, which fits cleanly inside the titlebar inset.

  1. Recommended Official Fix:

Decouple native macOS window control positions from webview zoom levels by clamping trafficLightPosition to a constant Y offset (y: 14px) across all zoom levels rather than scaling it dynamically:
``javascript
// Keep Y offset constant:
trafficLightPosition: { x: 16, y: 14 }
``