codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex app dropdown/popover content is invisible on macOS 13 Intel GPU

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

26.513.31313

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT paid account; exact plan unknown.

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 22.6.0 x86_64 i386macOS 13.7.8 (22H730)Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640, GPU device id 0x5926Electron 42.0.1, Chrome runtime 148.0.7778.97

What issue are you seeing?

Dropdowns and popovers in the Codex desktop app render incorrectly across the global UI.

When opening a dropdown, the popover shell/shadow/background appears, but the actual menu items are not visible or appear washed out/blank. The blank popover area can also become much larger than expected.

This affects global Codex UI dropdowns such as the model selector, review mode selector, and other app-level menus. Older Codex versions reportedly showed the same symptom on this machine as well.

What I already tried:

• Fully quit and restarted Codex.
• Moved the following render/cache directories out of the way so Codex could rebuild them:
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex/GPUCache
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex/DawnGraphiteCache
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex/DawnWebGPUCache
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Code Cache
  • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Cache
  • ~/Library/Caches/com.openai.codex
• Launched with softer rendering flags:
  • --disable-zero-copy
  • --disable-native-gpu-memory-buffers
  • --disable-features=CanvasOopRasterization,UseSkiaRenderer
• Tried --disable-blink-features=CSSBackdropFilter.

These did not fix the dropdown rendering issue.

Launching with --disable-gpu is not usable because Codex fails with:

GPU access not allowed. Reason: GPU access is disabled through commandline switch --disable-gpu and --disable-software-rasterizer.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open the Codex desktop app on the affected macOS Intel machine.
2. Open a global dropdown/popover, for example the model selector or review mode selector.
3. Observe that the popover container/background/shadow appears, but the menu items are invisible/blank or washed out.
4. The issue reproduces across multiple Codex global dropdowns/popovers.

What is the expected behavior?

Dropdown/popover content should render normally with visible menu items, readable text, and correct sizing/background.

Additional information

This looks like an Electron/Chromium compositor issue on macOS 13 Intel graphics. The visual symptom resembles a transparent/backdrop-filter popover surface being composited incorrectly.

The bundled frontend appears to use Radix dropdown/popover surfaces with transparent dropdown backgrounds and backdrop blur classes, for example:

bg-token-dropdown-background/90
backdrop-blur-sm
backdrop-blur-lg

Suggested investigation:

• Check dropdown/popover rendering with backdrop-filter disabled or replaced by solid surfaces on macOS 13 Intel GPUs.
• Consider using opaque fallback surfaces for dropdowns/popovers when GPU/compositor compatibility is poor.
• Confirm whether CSS backdrop-filter, transparent backgrounds, or Radix portal/popper wrappers are involved.