[Windows] System-wide stutter while Codex is idle; fully exiting app immediately restores OS responsiveness
What version of the Codex App are you using?
26.810.50856 — Powered by Codex & OWL, released 2026-08-14.
What issue are you seeing?
Codex Desktop causes severe system-wide stuttering on Windows even when there are no active Codex tasks running.
While the app is open, Windows interaction becomes choppy/jerky. Fully closing Codex immediately restores normal OS responsiveness.
This appears closely related to current reports #38716, #38551, #38698, #38710, and #33074. In particular, #38698 reports the same 26.810.50856 build and the same system-wide stuttering/recovery after exiting Codex. This report additionally documents an idle-state reproduction: no Codex task needs to be executing for the system-wide lag to occur.
Observed resource usage
A Task Manager capture during the affected state showed approximately:
- Total system CPU: 13%
- Memory: 59%
- Disk: 0%
- Codex process: ~8.5% CPU and ~540 MB RAM
- Additional Codex/codex.exe processes were present
The machine was therefore not under general CPU, RAM, or disk saturation.
Steps to reproduce
- Launch Codex Desktop 26.810.50856 on Windows.
- Do not run any Codex task / leave Codex idle.
- Use Windows normally and observe system-wide stuttering/jerky responsiveness.
- Fully exit Codex.
- Windows responsiveness immediately returns to normal.
Expected behavior
When Codex has no active tasks, background resource usage should remain bounded and the app should not affect mouse/input/UI responsiveness across the operating system.
Actual behavior
The entire OS becomes noticeably jerky while Codex is open, despite low overall system utilization. Fully exiting Codex reliably resolves the problem.
Additional information
A screenshot of Task Manager was captured showing the affected state. It is not attached here to avoid exposing unrelated local process information, but the relevant measurements are summarized above.
The issue was observed on 2026-08-15, one day after the reported release date of build 26.810.50856. Exact Windows build is not yet captured.
9 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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Additional affected-system hardware information:
This further rules out obvious resource-capacity limitations: the system-wide stutter occurs on a 16-core Ryzen 9 / 64 GB machine while Task Manager shows only ~13% total CPU and 59% memory usage.
For privacy, device name, Windows device ID, and product ID have intentionally not been included in this public issue.
Exact Windows edition/version/build is still to be captured.
Windows version confirmed for the affected system:
Combined affected environment now documented:
This is useful because several related reports are on Windows build 26200; this reproduction confirms the same system-wide stutter behavior on the older 22631/23H2 branch as well.
Isn't this similar to mine? I've now switched to using CodeX in VS Code.
macOS 26.810.50856: dozens of ChatGPT Computer Use processes spawn while idle, causing near-100% CPU and severe system lag
Additional A/B diagnostic result: Pet is disabled on the affected system.
The system-wide stutter still occurs with Pet disabled, so this reproduction does not appear to be the Pet/overlay-specific case described in #38663. That narrows the issue toward the other 26.810.50856 idle/background regressions (for example #38698 / #38716).
Opening and then closing the pet seems to be solving the stutter temporarily.
this completely fixes the stutter for me
Additional WPR/WPA data from an affected session (Codex/ChatGPT Desktop 26.810.50856):
ChatGPT.exe <OpenAI.Codex>(PID 12536) accumulated 32.83 s of sampled CPU during the trace.n/a), while 10.55 s had resolved stack roots.chrome.dll, through both direct Chromium frames andntdll.dll -> kernel32.dll -> ChatGPT.exe -> chrome.dllpaths.codex.exeitself was negligible by comparison (about 15 ms sampled CPU in the same capture).win32u/win32k), but it is small compared with the sustained Chromium CPU time. NVIDIA/D3D activity is also present only in small amounts in the sampled stacks.chrome.dllwere unavailable, so the exact Chromium/Electron function cannot be identified from this capture.This strengthens the hypothesis that the stutter is caused by sustained Chromium/Electron-side background activity or a busy loop in the main desktop process rather than Codex backend work or overall system resource saturation.
I am not attaching the raw ETL publicly because it contains local paths / system details.
THIS IS URGENT. FIX ASAP. SHOULD BE PRIORITY 1