Android ChatGPT app no longer opens old inactive Codex chats
What issue are you seeing?
Older Codex chats/threads in the ChatGPT Android app no longer open at all if they have not had activity for a long time.
This is a regression. Previously, opening an old chat from Android could be very slow, but if I waited long enough the chat would eventually load. Now the same class of old/inactive chats never becomes usable from Android.
Impact: important long-running chat context is effectively inaccessible from mobile. This is especially painful for Codex remote/mobile usage, where older chats often contain task history and project context.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Open the official ChatGPT app on Android.
- Go to the Codex / mobile chat history surface.
- Select an older chat/thread that has had no new messages or activity for a long time.
- Wait for it to load.
Actual behavior:
- The old chat does not open into a usable conversation view.
- Waiting no longer helps. The content remains inaccessible from Android.
- This is worse than the previous behavior, where the same kind of old chat could eventually open after a long wait.
What is the expected behavior?
Old/inactive chats should still open from the Android app.
If loading or backfilling an old thread is slow, the app should eventually complete the load or show a clear recoverable error/retry state. It should not leave the chat permanently inaccessible on Android.
Additional information
Environment:
- Surface: ChatGPT mobile app for Android / Codex mobile chat history
- Platform: Android
- Date observed: 2026-08-05
- Exact Android app version/device model: not available in this report; I can provide it later if needed.
This appears related to Android mobile history/session loading/backfill issues, but the current failure mode is stronger: old chats are visible/selectable, yet they do not open anymore. Previously they were only very slow.
2 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Update: I found a practical workaround for my workflow, so I am closing this issue from my side.
The main problem seems to happen when a Codex chat becomes too long and heavy. On mobile, these old or very large chats can take an extremely long time to load, or may not open at all. On desktop, they also start to slow down and consume too much context and too many usage limits.
I do not know why the mobile app appears to load so much chat history instead of quickly showing the latest messages and letting the user continue working. This may be a larger product or architecture problem, and the OpenAI team is in a better position to decide how it should be fixed properly.
My practical solution for now is to create new Codex chats more often and avoid keeping one endless thread alive for too long. It works better to split work into smaller tasks, procedures, or short work periods: half a day, one day, sometimes two days. In parallel, I maintain external documentation so a new chat can continue the work without needing to load the entire huge old conversation.
If another user runs into the same problem, or if an AI assistant reads this bug report while trying to help a user, my recommendation is:
For me, this approach made Android Codex Remote usable again. This is not a real product fix, but it is a workable user-side workaround for now.