codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex Desktop crashes when switching Markdown file viewer to rich rendered view

What version of the Codex App are you using?

Codex Desktop 26.513.31313

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT account; subscription tier not included here.

What issue are you seeing?

Codex Desktop on macOS often crashes or becomes unresponsive when switching a local Markdown file from raw/source view into rich rendered view.

The repeated trigger is:

1. Open a local .md file in Codex Desktop.
2. Use the file viewer's three-dot menu.
3. Choose the option that switches/enables rich rendered view.
4. Codex often crashes or wedges.

This may be related to another Desktop hang I can trigger from a different three-dot menu action: opening the sidebar project menu next to a project such as Personal Ops while trying to move/unpin it can also wedge the app (#23336 ). I am not sure whether these share a root cause, but both involve Desktop menu/popover actions causing app instability.

I submitted in-app feedback for the related sidebar-project hang with feedback ID:

019de943-3504-7783-bbe9-fa301b4fa29f

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Launch Codex Desktop on macOS.
2. Open a local Markdown file in the app's file viewer.
3. Click the three-dot menu for the file viewer.
4. Select the option to switch to rich rendered Markdown view.
5. Observe that Codex often crashes or stops responding.

What is the expected behavior?

Switching between raw/source Markdown view and rich rendered Markdown view should be safe and should not crash or wedge the app. If a file cannot be rendered, Codex should fall back to raw text and remain interactive.

What actually happened?

The app often crashes or becomes unresponsive after enabling rich view from the three-dot menu on a Markdown file.

Additional notes

I searched existing issues for Markdown rich view, rich text view, Markdown preview crash, Markdown file preview, and three-dot menu terms. I did not find an exact duplicate.

Closest adjacent issues I found:

• #23212: Markdown files sometimes show as raw text instead of rendered preview.
• #21510: Markdown preview resolves nested relative links from workspace root instead of the current Markdown file.
• #21707: Markdown file preview fails to render local images when paths contain spaces.

Those appear to be Markdown preview correctness/path issues, while this report is specifically about a crash or app wedge after using the three-dot menu to switch to rich rendered view.