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Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps, growing without any limit: +5GB per day at least #25921
Description
Summary
Codex Desktop is continuously adding paired .dmp
and _sidecar.json
files under:
~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending
On my machine this directory grew to 4.9G
and 54,504
files in one day. The count continued increasing during investigation, so this appears to be active Crashpad dump generation rather than stale one-time leftovers.
The Codex Desktop app is still functional while this is happening. I can use the app, inspect the filesystem, and interact with GitHub from the same running session.
So the user-visible problem is not that Codex is fully crashing or unable to launch. The issue is that Crashpad is continuously generating pending dump/sidecar pairs in the background while the app remains usable, causing unbounded local disk growth.
I am not attaching minidumps publicly because they may contain memory, local paths, or private data. I can share the newest .dmp
privately if OpenAI maintainers provide a safe upload path.
Environment
- Product: Codex Desktop app on macOS
- Codex app version:
26.527.60818
CFBundleVersion
:3437
- Crashpad/Electron annotation observed from live process:
prod=Codex_Mac
,ver=148.0.7778.179
- macOS:
26.3.1 (25D771280a)
- Architecture:
arm64
Observed evidence
Crashpad pending directory:
~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending
Latest measurements:
4.9G ~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending
54,504 files total
27,252 .dmp files
27,252 _sidecar.json files
Sampled pending file time range:
oldest sampled pending files: 2026-06-02 13:31:21 CEST
latest sampled pending files: 2026-06-02 21:08:24 CEST
During the investigation the count increased from 53,444
to 54,064
, then to 54,504
, which indicates the queue was still growing.
I also observed two Codex browser_crashpad_handler
processes running under PPID=1
since Sat May 30 11:47:50 2026
, both using the same Crashpad database:
/Applications/Codex.app/.../Helpers/browser_crashpad_handler \
--database=~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad \
--annotation=plat=OS X \
--annotation=prod=Codex_Mac \
--annotation=ver=148.0.7778.179
The local app remained usable enough to inspect/report this, so the visible issue is not just a normal foreground app crash. It looks like Crashpad or a monitored helper process is repeatedly generating pending dumps without bounding, upload/processing cleanup, or rotation.
Expected behavior
Crash reports should be bounded, uploaded/processed/rotated, or not continuously generated while the app remains usable.
Actual behavior
Pending Crashpad reports accumulate rapidly and consume multiple GB of local disk space.
Commands used to collect evidence
du -sh "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending"
find "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending" -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l
find "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending" -maxdepth 1 -type f \
| sed 's/.*\.//' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :CFBundleShortVersionString' /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Info.plist
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :CFBundleVersion' /Applications/Codex.app/Contents/Info.plist
sw_vers
uname -m
ps ax -o pid,ppid,lstart,command \
| grep -E 'browser_crashpad_handler|com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad' \
| grep -v grep
Related issues
This may be related to other Codex Desktop helper/process cleanup reports:
- Codex App update left old crashpad helper; relaunch could no-op until clean restart #25259: stale Crashpad helper after update/relaunch
- Codex App UI freezes: worker crashes, massive git/worktree errors, and concurrent orphaned app-server processes #11090: orphaned Codex processes and UI freezes
- Can't open app in Tahoe 26.2 (25C56) #10627: prior Crashpad/macOS startup reports
Activity
Jolg42 commentedon Jun 2, 2026
Update: I cleared the files inside the Crashpad
pending
directory after filing this issue.Result immediately after cleanup:
So the bulk of the disk usage was recoverable by deleting pending reports, but new paired dump/sidecar files appeared immediately afterward. That supports the earlier observation that Crashpad dump generation is still active, not just a stale historical backlog.
I did not attach any
.dmp
files publicly.mxggle commentedon Jun 7, 2026
Same here, mine reached 59GB🫠. Even though we've hit the 65535 file system limit, the background process is still relentlessly trying to dump more files.
dionylon commentedon Jun 9, 2026
I am seeing the same issue on macOS with a newer Codex Desktop build, with a bit more diagnostic detail.
Environment
26.602.71036
CFBundleVersion
:3685
ver=149.0.7827.54
Impact observed
The pending directory grew to about
61G
:Counts from the pending directory before cleanup:
After cleanup/reinstall/restart, the directory continued growing at roughly one crash report per second:
Key diagnostic detail
The newest
.dmp
files contain this FATAL message frombrowser_crashpad_handler
itself:So in this case it looks like
browser_crashpad_handler
is crashing/restarting in a loop and writing paired.dmp
/_sidecar.json
files for itself.System diagnostic logs also show repeated
browser_crashpad_handler
crashes with:Related behavior
The in-app browser / Browser Use had previously become unavailable on this machine. During investigation, Codex logs repeatedly showed Browser Use / IAB lifecycle entries, and
browser_use_availability_resolved available=true
shortly before Crashpad kept generating dumps. That may or may not be the trigger, but the issue appears tied to the Codex Desktop browser/Chromium/Crashpad path.A reinstall did not fix it.
Disabling
browser@openai-bundled
, disablingchrome@openai-bundled
, and settingBROWSER_USE_AVAILABLE_BACKENDS = ""
in~/.codex/config.toml
also did not stop the dump growth after restart.Temporary workaround that stopped disk growth
Because macOS would not allow modifying
/Applications/Codex.app/.../browser_crashpad_handler
even withsudo
(Operation not permitted
), I worked around it by making the user Crashpad database read-only and immutable:After that, pending stayed at zero for the observed window:
This is only a disk-growth workaround, not a real fix, since it effectively prevents Codex from writing Crashpad reports.
Cuimc commentedon Jun 9, 2026
I am too, just cleaned up 22G today
[-]Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps, growing to ~5GB[/-][+]Codex Desktop continuously generates Crashpad pending dumps, growing without any limit: +5GB per day at least[/+]changjonathanc commentedon Jun 13, 2026
same issue on version 26.601.10930. cc @dnakov
dnakov commentedon Jun 14, 2026
I think this is fixed with later macos versions. at least in 26.5 it is
ai-poet commentedon Jun 17, 2026
I ran into this exact same issue. Oh my god, no wonder my Mac's storage keeps getting full. Is Codex Desktop just a mountain of garbage code OpenAI built via vibe coding?
jordanade commentedon Jun 17, 2026
Both Claude and Codex have ZERO RESPECT for user's machines. Holy hell.
cyfung1031 commentedon Jun 18, 2026
every json just 2 bytes+ 150KB, but the more serious thing behind is that, there are crash reports continously generating in
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data
use this script to check your macOS.
script to view and clean the crash reports
after deleting, try delete this as well to reset Codex.
guojianlan commentedon Jun 18, 2026
I hit what appears to be the same Crashpad pending-dump growth issue, but at a much larger scale.
Environment
26.611.62324
CFBundleVersion
:4028
15.6 (24G84)
arm64
149.0.7827.115
Observed disk usage
The large growth was under the legacy app-data path:
Before cleanup, this directory contained:
File time range:
Daily distribution included multiple days above 13 GiB:
Largest observed dump files were still relatively small:
So the disk growth was caused by hundreds of thousands of small crash dumps, not a few large files.
Cleanup result
After deleting pending files, the legacy path is now empty:
The currently running Codex app appears to use a different app-data path:
Current size there is small:
That path difference may be relevant: the unbounded growth happened under
com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad
, while the current running app usesCodex/Crashpad
.I am not attaching
.dmp
files publicly because they may contain private memory, paths, or local state. I can collect additional metadata or share a dump through a safe maintainer-provided upload path if useful.liuminsheng3 commentedon Jun 19, 2026
For anyone still trying to distinguish "old backlog" from "active dump loop", I would measure both Codex app-data paths separately before deleting broader app state:
For cleanup, I would avoid deleting the whole
Application Support/Codex
directory unless a full local reset is intended. A narrower recovery path is:pending
,new
,completed
, andattachments
to Trash.Example Trash-only version:
I would not attach
.dmp
files publicly; they may contain memory, local paths, prompts, or project state. Metadata like counts, size, oldest/newest timestamp, app version, and which path is still growing should be enough for most public triage.Disclosure: I maintain SafeDisk, a local-first storage cleanup/checklist project. I wrote up this specific Crashpad cleanup boundary here: https://www.getsafedisks.com/codex-crashpad-pending-dumps-disk-space?utm_source=github&utm_medium=issue-comment&utm_campaign=codex-crashpad-disk-space&utm_term=codex-crashpad-pending-dumps&utm_content=openai-codex-25921
If someone wants a private second read before deleting app state, that page now has a single on-page Deep Cleanup request form after the read-only checks.
Jolg42 commentedon Jun 20, 2026
My temporary macOS workaround:
I’m clearing Codex’s pending Crashpad reports every 15 minutes to avoid the local buildup:
Setup on macOS:
crontab -e
Add the cron line above, save, then verify:
crontab -l
This deletes only files directly inside:
~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending
Jolg42 commentedon Jun 20, 2026
In case you also have that problem, there is yet another way this vibe coded app wastes disk space for me, see #25667 (comment)
cyfung1031 commentedon Jun 21, 2026
I found a method which seems working well. clean up the folder as mentioned by @Jolg42 , then set it read-only.
I tested few hours. Now Codex cannot write any trash to this folder any more.
Crashpad/pending/
onlyCrashpad/pending/
+com.openai.codex.code_sign_clone
liuminsheng3 commentedon Jun 22, 2026
One caution on the
chmod
/ read-only workaround above: I would treat it as an emergency brake, not the default cleanup path.Making only
Crashpad/pending
read-only can stop an active dump loop, but it also prevents Codex from writing crash reports and may hide the signal maintainers need. I would keep the scope narrow and avoid making these broader paths permanently read-only:~/Library/Application Support/Codex
~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex
com.openai.codex.code_sign_clone
directoriesMy safer order would be:
pending
,new
,completed
, andattachments
to Trash.pending
starts growing again.I updated the checklist here with the narrower warning and a small rollback snippet:
https://www.getsafedisks.com/codex-crashpad-pending-dumps-disk-space?utm_source=github&utm_medium=followup&utm_campaign=first-paid-cleanup&utm_term=codex-crashpad-pending-dumps-disk-space&utm_content=readonly-safety-followup
Eseperio commentedon Jul 16, 2026
This is a serious problem, it is rapidly damaging hardware in computers where memory is not replaceable. It must be fixed asap.
libairi commentedon Jul 21, 2026
Still reproducible in the current unified ChatGPT/Codex desktop app, with the newer Crashpad database path.
Environment
com.openai.codex
)26.715.70719
5650
15.7.4
(24G517
)150.0.7871.124
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad
Impact
Crashpad/pending
reached approximately 33.4 GiB. About 23.3 GiB had been generated during the last three days. Deleting pending reports recovered the disk space, but new paired dumps/sidecars began appearing immediately.The main ChatGPT window can remain alive while
browser_crashpad_handler
crashes and respawns repeatedly. macOS retained at least 50 handler crash reports on 2026-07-20 and 43 on 2026-07-21; the real number of Crashpad pending dumps was much higher.Exact handler failure
The macOS
.ips
reports show:The earliest retained report on this machine is from
2026-07-20 08:17:09 +0800
, before build 5650 was installed on this machine. Its handler UUID is4C4C44FF-5555-3144-A167-DF0A5F297DB2
.I also downloaded the official build 5538 (
26.715.31251
) and compared its handler with build 5650. Both use Chromium150.0.7871.124
, have the same Mach-O UUID, and have an identical SHA-256 hash for the unsigned code region. Therefore rolling back only to build 5538 is unlikely to avoid this failure.Workarounds tested
--disable-breakpad
: did not prevent new Crashpad reports.Crashpad/pending
: contains disk usage but does not fix the handler crash loop.No
.dmp
file is attached because it may contain private process memory. I can provide sanitized metadata or use a maintainer-provided private upload channel if needed.Could the desktop app either fix the handler startup/monitor-self failure, honor a supported crash-reporting opt-out, or enforce a strict retention/size limit on pending dumps?
jakehop commentedon Aug 9, 2026
Same issue here. The crazy thing is that a pruner does ship with Crashpad, but it's not implemented here. I've seen this behaviour in other Electron apps, where the handler is wired up but the pruner is not, and if telemetry is turned off or blocked, these logs will just pile up in pending.
austinhutchison commentedon Aug 15, 2026
I’m seeing the same Crashpad pending-report growth on the current unified ChatGPT/Codex desktop app.
Environment:
The affected path is:
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad/pending
This directory grew to approximately 100 GB and roughly one million files. The files appear to be Crashpad pending reports, including
.dmp
files and sidecar metadata. The app remained usable while the directory grew.This appears to be the newer
Codex/Crashpad
path rather than the older:~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending
Deleting or moving the contents of
Crashpad/pending
recovers the disk space, but I have not yet established whether the directory regrows after cleanup.Could someone clarify whether the comment that “later macOS versions, at least 26.5,” fix this refers to a known macOS fix? If so, is macOS 26.5 expected to prevent the Crashpad handler failure, or is a Codex app update also required?
I have not attached dump files because they may contain process memory, local paths, or other private data. I can provide sanitized counts, timestamps, or logs if that would help diagnose it.
lske837 commentedon Sep 1, 2026
I am seeing what appears to be the same class of issue on macOS, although my Crashpad database path is different:
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad/pending
My Codex Desktop version is 26.825.51511. The live Codex helper processes use:
--user-data-dir=/Users/xxx/Library/Application Support/Codex
--database=/Users/xxx/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad
The pending directory contains the same paired
.dmp
and_sidecar.json
files described in this issue. Some sampled reports date back to June 2026, while others are from late August.The directory has become so large that even enumerating it is very slow: a bounded directory read did not finish within 8 seconds. A bounded scan managed to process only 118 entries (about 10 MB) before timing out, so this is not a normal small crash-report queue.
It also appears to still be active rather than merely containing old leftovers: the
pending
directory modification time advanced from2026-09-01 15:51:03 +0800
to2026-09-01 15:51:34 +0800
during a 30-second read-only observation.Separately, when this happens I have also observed a process named
ReportClash
continuously consuming CPU. I do not yet know whether it is a Codex child/helper process or an unrelated process, so I am reporting it as a correlation only.dewalt-1 commentedon Sep 2, 2026
Still present on the current buildת adding a data point with different characteristics from the browser_crashpad_handler SIGTRAP loop in #36982.
Environment: ChatGPT.app 26.818.41509 (build 6962), bundle com.openai.codex, Codex Framework (Chromium) 151.0.7922.170, macOS 15.6.1.
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad/pending is 174.6 GB, against 171 MB for everything else in Application Support/Codex combined — 99.9% of the directory. Uniform ~161 KB .dmp + _sidecar.json pairs ({"capture_kind":"crash"}), so ≈1.08M dumps and >2M files. The directory's link count has saturated at 65535 and the directory entry itself is 65 MB.
Differences from #36982: No browser_crashpad_handler-*.ips in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports (30 reports present, none from the handler). Not in a tight loop: last write to pending/ was 16 hours ago and the app has run since without adding to it. Dump annotations reference Utility and extension process types. Crashpad/ was created 2026-04-05, so ~1.1 GB/day averaged rather than 5–17 GB/day.
Whatever generates the dumps, nothing prunes them. The retention bug looks separable from any specific crash loop: even a low crash rate reaches 175 GB given five months. A size or age cap on pending/ would bound the damage independently of fixing the crashers.
ReymondAkpanya commentedon Sep 21, 2026
Still present on a much newer build, and I think I can supply the missing piece: why the loop sustains itself.
Environment
26.831.21537
, Codex Framework (Chromium)152.0.7977.64
26.3.1
(25D771280a
), Apple SiliconThe dumps are of the crash handler itself
Every
.dmp
inCrashpad/pending
is a minidump ofbrowser_crashpad_handler
, not of the app or a renderer. Each one contains the same fatal error:with annotations:
Because the handler is launched with
--monitor-self-annotation
, it monitors itself. So the sequence is:mach_port_request_notification
, getsKERN_INVALID_CAPABILITY
(20)CHECK
atexception_handler_server.cc:76
and diesThat's a loop with no base case, which is why the growth is perfectly linear rather than correlated with any app activity.
Measured rate
Exactly 1 dump per second,
181,552
bytes each, plus a 24-byte_sidecar.json
:In my case it reached 240,966 files / 21 GB, and took a 228 GB disk down to 0 bytes free — to the point that unrelated tooling could no longer create files.
completed/
was empty across all 240,966 reports, so nothing ever drains: uploads never succeed, and there is no cap or TTL onpending/
.macOS independently logged 387
.ips
reports for the same helper under~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports
, oldest dated a week before I noticed anything. There is no user-visible signal at all until the disk fills.The trigger is upstream, the amplification is not
The
mach_port_request_notification
/KERN_INVALID_CAPABILITY
failure is not specific to this app — the identical error on Tahoe 26.3.1 is reported against other Chromium/Electron apps:So the
CHECK
failure itself is a Crashpad/Tahoe Mach IPC problem. But the unbounded disk consumption is independent of it: any repeatable handler-startup failure produces the same runaway, because the self-monitor treats the handler's own fatalCHECK
as a reportable crash.Two independent mitigations
CHECK
failure — or back off / rate-limit after N consecutive identical dumps. This alone breaks the loop regardless of the upstream cause.pending/
with a size cap or TTL so a silently failing upload path cannot fill the disk.Either one would have turned this from "disk at 0 bytes" into a log line.
Workaround
Emptying
pending/
and then removing write permission from the directory stops the disk growth immediately (the handler keeps retrying, but can no longer write):Confirmed: growth stops, and nothing spills into
new/
,completed/
, orattachments/
— the wholeCrashpad
directory stays at 20K. Reverse withchmod 700
.ashtonsix commentedon Oct 5, 2026
Adding a measured data point from 2026-10-05 on macOS 26.0.1 (25A362), arm64.
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad/pending
contained 1,212,428 files removed during cleanup: 110,728,502,872 logical bytes / 114,221,113,344 allocated bytes (114.22 GB). File mtimes ranged from 2026-07-27 through 2026-10-04. The dump-header timestamp histogram included 85,720 dumps on 2026-08-27 alone. This backlog was a major contributor to an almost-full 500 GB disk.I parsed ten retained minidump samples before deleting them. All ten named this main module:
Each sampled dump was 182,624 bytes and identified ARM64. This corroborates reports here that the crash handler itself is being dumped, although the sample does not establish that every report had the same cause.
The currently installed app is 26.930.21537 (build 12776), with framework 154.0.8037.93. The pending queue has stayed empty during today's cleanup while the app remains usable. I am reporting a historical backlog, not claiming that the current build is actively reproducing the loop or that the underlying bug is fixed.
For local containment, I installed a LaunchAgent that runs every five minutes, expires reports older than 24 hours, and additionally caps each pending/completed queue at 64 report groups and 256 MiB. It groups matching UUID dump/sidecar files, gives fresh writes a two-minute grace period, and skips unknown files, symlinks, and files that change during inspection. This bounds retained diagnostic storage without making the database unwritable, but it does not repair a crashing helper.
A built-in retention/size limit would prevent this degree of disk exhaustion independently of the handler failure. No raw minidumps are attached.
ahmedkhan25 commentedon Oct 17, 2026
Still happening on the current build, and at a much larger scale. Measured 2026-10-15 to 2026-10-17:
Environment
26.1007.71326
(build20398
), Codex Framework (Chromium)155.0.8059.40
15.7.4
, Apple Silicon (arm64)What I found
~/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad
~/Library/Application Support/Codex/Crashpad
(almost all of it inpending/
)That was about 35% of a 926 GB disk. Free space fell to 1.4 GB before I found it. Nothing in the app warned me. I only found it by running
du
over~/Library
.The app kept working the whole time, as others have reported here. So the dumps build up silently in the background with no limit.
Cleanup
With the app still running, I renamed both
Crashpad
folders and deleted the renamed copies. Free space went from 1.4 GB to 50+ GB within minutes, and the delete is still running (millions of small files).Asks
Crashpad/pending
, with automatic pruning (see also Add storage limits and automatic cleanup for Codex-generated data #51361).Related: #36982, #39875, #51739, #52194, #51361.