codex - 💡(How to fix) Fix Codex Desktop macOS: new chat/home UI renders with malformed oversized composer and dark overlay

Summary

Codex Desktop on macOS is rendering the new chat / home screen incorrectly. The page opens, but the central composer and surrounding surface are visually malformed: the input appears oversized, there is a duplicated/ghosted dark panel or overlay beneath it, and the layout looks partially clipped/mispositioned.

This looks similar in spirit to #20820, but it affects the main new-chat/home screen rather than only the Plugins page, and it persists on a newer build.

Environment

• App: Codex Desktop for macOS
• Version: 26.506.31421
• Build: 2620
• Bundle id: com.openai.codex
• macOS: 15.7.5
• macOS build: 24G607
• Architecture: x86_64
• Mac: MacBook Pro, MacBookPro15,2
• CPU: Intel Core i5, 2.4 GHz, 4 cores
• Memory: 16 GB
• GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655
• Metal: Supported

What the UI looks like

On the blank/new chat screen for a local repo, the page heading renders, but the composer area is broken:

• oversized composer/input surface
• dark duplicate/ghost panel or overlay underneath the composer
• malformed shadow/black overlay spanning across the middle of the window
• controls remain visible, but the page looks visually corrupted

The affected workspace title in the screenshot was for the project, but this appears to be a Codex Desktop UI rendering issue rather than project-specific behavior.

Steps Tried

None of these fixed it:

1. Reset app zoom with Cmd+0.
2. Fully quit/reopen Codex.
3. Resize the Codex window.
4. Clear desktop app state/cache by moving aside:
   • ~/Library/Application Support/Codex
   • ~/Library/Caches/com.openai.codex
   • ~/Library/Preferences/com.openai.codex.plist
5. Relaunch Codex with GPU disabled:

   open -na /Applications/Codex.app --args --disable-gpu --disable-gpu-compositing

After clearing state, the app recreated fresh Chromium/GPU-related cache directories such as:

• DawnGraphiteCache
• GPUCache
• DawnWebGPUCache

The visual issue persisted from the fresh state.

Expected

The new chat/home screen should render normally, with the composer aligned and no large ghost/black overlay.

Actual

The new chat/home surface renders with an oversized/malformed composer and a large dark overlay/ghost panel beneath it.

Notes

Recent logs under ~/Library/Logs/com.openai.codex/2026/05/12/ did not show an obvious GPU crash. The relevant recent startup logs showed normal app-server/renderer startup, with some unrelated thread-state warnings/errors such as Item not found in turn state and goals feature is disabled.