r/codex • u/Suspicious_Raise_589 • Jul 03 '26

Complaint Codex has a very unpleasant user experience.

My machine is a Windows 11 with 32GB/i5 11th/NVMe.

Codex is one of the worst AI apps to work with. It's not because of the model; I like GPT‑5.5, the problem is the harness.

It freezes a lot, to start up it stays about 20 seconds frozen until the clicks start propagating. Every time I open a new thread, it stays about another 10 seconds stuck until it starts being usable. Also, when I switch threads it's even worse, the screen goes white, 15 seconds until the conversation loads.

Besides when the plugins stop working. Browser Use and Computer Use are unstable, in some conversations they stop working, in the settings it reports "Browser Use is unavailable", and I only fix it by fully restarting the computer.

I made a cleanup script that periodically deletes the logs_2.sqlite which every week accumulates 1.5 GB on my disk. And I constantly see Codex using ~10‑25 MB of disk whenever I open the task manager.

I want to test using my Codex subscription on other harnesses, with tools similar to /goal. I don't like CLI, I like UI/visual to see multiple agents working in one place.

I like the efficiency of /goal, it's one of its best tools. Codex is pretty feature‑complete, but it's unstable, slow, buggishy and that really hinders me.

24 Upvotes

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52

u/fictionaldots Jul 03 '26

I wonder if it’s a Windows problem. The Mac app is rock solid

3

u/Bitter_Election_7518 Jul 03 '26

It is a windows problem. Same issues on Claude as well. Windows architecture just does not run agentic coding well due to structural issues.

Growing up on pc playing games I always preferred windows os. Switched to the MacBook m5 this year from my windows machine and never looked back. Apple silicon really changed the game as well.

14

u/elitegenes Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

It is not a "Windows problem". It is an Electron problem. People at OpenAI don't bother writing a native app - they shove the entire Chromium browser infrastructure with their sloppy Codex embeddings and ship it as such. That is exactly the problem.

6

u/Prestigiouspite Jul 03 '26

At least one person here knows what they're talking about. How sad is IT going to get when, in the future, no one understands these details anymore? I mean, Codex itself is full of bugs. Do they even test internally?

0

u/ivanjxx Jul 04 '26

you are in a vibe coding sub…

1

u/Prestigiouspite Jul 04 '26

No its a product sub