codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bug: image-heavy chats repeatedly reconnect and become very slow [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

When a Codex App chat accumulates many attached images over the course of a conversation, the app starts reconnecting on nearly every new prompt/steer/follow-up and the thread becomes extremely slow.

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.429.30905

What subscription do you have?

Plus

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 25.3.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

When a chat accumulates many attached images over the course of a conversation, the Codex app eventually starts showing Reconnecting... on almost every interaction: new prompts, steering messages, follow-ups, etc.

This is not necessarily caused by attaching many images in a single prompt. In my case, it happens after a longer workflow where images are gradually added across the conversation: several screenshots in one prompt, another image later, more UI iteration screenshots after that, and so on.

Once the chat reaches that state, each new interaction often goes through multiple reconnect attempts, usually up to 5/5. After the retries finish, the run may continue, but the chat becomes extremely slow.

This has been happening consistently for roughly the last 10 days, around late April / early May 2026.

Common cases where I hit this:

• Browser/sidebar annotation runs that attach many images during the work
• UI iteration workflows with many screenshots across multiple prompts
• Longer chats where images accumulate gradually over time

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Start a Codex App chat.
2. Work through a longer image-heavy flow.
3. Attach images gradually across the conversation, not necessarily all in one prompt.
   • Example: several screenshots in one prompt, another screenshot later, then more UI iteration screenshots in follow-up prompts.
4. Continue sending prompts, steering messages, or follow-ups after the thread has accumulated many attached images.
5. Observe repeated Reconnecting... messages, often reaching 5/5.
6. After the reconnect cycle completes, the chat may continue, but interactions become extremely slow.

What is the expected behavior?

Image-heavy chats should remain responsive across the conversation, or degrade gracefully without repeated reconnect cycles on every new interaction.

The app should not repeatedly go through Reconnecting... 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5 after a thread has accumulated many images.

Additional information

The attached screenshot shows the repeated reconnect messages during a run.

This seems related to accumulated conversation state / attachments over time rather than a one-off network disconnect, because once a chat reaches this state the reconnect behavior tends to repeat on subsequent prompts in the same thread.