Codex desktop: tasks stuck on Thinking / stream disconnects across projects
I’m experiencing persistent Codex desktop failures on macOS in ChatGPT/Codex desktop version 26.818.21641 (build 6849).
Since 20 August 2026, both existing and newly created Codex tasks have repeatedly stalled on “Thinking.” This happens across unrelated local projects, so it does not appear to be caused by one repository, one task’s context, or a single large conversation.
Observed scope over 20–21 August:
- 23 top-level turns were manually interrupted.
- 14 of those ran for at least one minute across 10 separate tasks.
- 7 ran longer than five minutes.
- The 14 long interrupted turns consumed 2 hours 22 minutes of elapsed time.
- Including one confirmed terminal stream failure, total time lost was approximately 2 hours 30 minutes.
- The problem reproduces in fresh chats, not only long-running chats.
Local storage checks found no evidence of missing or corrupted conversations: session files and local database integrity checks were healthy. The issue appears to be request-streaming/reconnection or desktop client handling rather than deleted chats.
Token impact:
- Three of the long interrupted turns recorded approximately 237,236 total local model-request tokens combined.
- This includes 236,402 input tokens and 834 output tokens.
- 225,024 cached-input tokens are included within the input total and are not additional tokens.
- The confirmed stream-failure turn recorded no token usage before it failed.
I have already fully quit and restarted the desktop app many times. Please investigate persistent Codex desktop request streaming/reconnection failures for this app build and account, especially cases where a turn remains in “Thinking” without any assistant or tool event ever beginning.
3 Comments
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I’m experiencing the same issue today.
Codex tasks are getting stuck on “Thinking” for a very long time. Tasks that would normally take only a few minutes are now taking roughly 30–50 minutes, and some still do not complete at all.
I also had a task that never reached a completed result, but usage was still consumed while it was stuck.
There is no clear error message — Codex just keeps thinking without finishing the task. Restarting or retrying does not always help.
This started happening noticeably today and is much worse than the normal behavior I was seeing before.
I’m using Codex Desktop with ChatGPT Plus.
Same here - it's become almost unusable