Spinner on first run of codex does not let copy link
Resolved 💬 8 comments Opened Dec 5, 2025 by Komzpa Closed Apr 6, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (Bronx83, contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
What version of Codex is running?
codex-cli 0.65.0
What subscription do you have?
Plus
Which model were you using?
any
What platform is your computer?
Linux 6.17.0-7-generic x86_64 unknown
What issue are you seeing?
When I ssh to machine and run codex it runs with a nice animation. However browser doesn't auto-open (it's ssh) and link is long and not clickable in terminal (because it spans two lines). Copying the link is impossible because every frame of animation resets selection.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
When I ssh to machine and run codex it runs with a nice animation. However browser doesn't auto-open (it's ssh) and link is long and not clickable in terminal (because it spans two lines). Copying the link is impossible because every frame of animation resets selection.
What is the expected behavior?
_No response_
Additional information
_No response_
8 Comments
Thank you for this!
I created a PR to stop the animation when the authentication URL is present in the cli https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/7872
Hi @etraut-openai , what do you think will be the best solution for this case? We can consider adding a '--no-animation' flag to the cli.
+1 to this. Insanely frustrating to waste 30 seconds trying to copy a URL since it keeps "refreshing" with the animation.
At least a hint that one can run "codex login" to not have the spinner would help.
We recently added preview support for device code authentication. It's designed to address headless logins or situations involving ssh. Please give it a try and let us know if this meets your needs.
The issue still exists. As a sample, the same screen on Claude doesn't have such animation, which re-renders the screen each second, and it doesn't cancel url selection
This is so insane, I can't believe there is no way to make this work. Just stopped using codex because of it.
This will be addressed in the next release.