Codex CLI now runs a side chat next to your main one, and takes recordings

Codex CLI can now show a side conversation beside your main chat, in the same terminal. It's off by default, and needs a window at least 100 columns wide.

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01 02 03 04 05 Side chats

openai/codex · release notes, November 13 · openai/codex · pull request #58992

Codex CLI now runs a side chat next to your main one

Opt-in Terminals 100 columns or wider

The main chat sits on the left, the side chat on the right, and both keep streaming. Drag the divider and Codex remembers the width. Leader z zooms one pane to full width.

Model providers.

A new Model providers screen, under Sessions, lists every provider on the connected server. Press space on one and new chats start on it. The model list refreshes after a restart.

Changing that default leaves your existing work alone. A chat that's already open, or one you resume later, keeps talking to the provider it was saved with.

On Google Cloud Vertex AI, Codex used to send its full tool list with every request. Now it adds tool changes to the conversation as updates. One setting turns that off.

Recordings and GIFs.

You can now attach audio recordings when the model you picked accepts audio. If the provider rejects a recording, Codex leaves it out of later turns, so the chat keeps going.

Every recording used to reserve 12,000 tokens, however short it was. Now Codex measures each clip at 10 tokens a second, so a 30-second clip costs about 300 tokens, and more recordings survive compaction.

Codex's image generation can now make or edit an animated GIF. You can set how many frames it has and how long each one shows. You switch it on first.

tmux and alerts.

Fullscreen Codex can now draw image previews and pets inside a tmux pane, in Ghostty or Kitty. tmux has to allow passthrough. If it doesn't, the pets command shows a notice saying what to change.

Approval notifications used to cut a command off after 30 characters. Now they show all of it, and say whether Codex wants terminal input or network access. OSC 777 notifications are new, and pass through tmux.

Fixes.

If you switch ChatGPT accounts on one machine, the history and resume pickers now list only the chats the signed-in account started. That covers new chats. Older ones stay shared.

A steering message sent mid-turn could get lost right as the turn saved its transcript, or after you left a long-running chat and came back. Codex now delivers both.

A reply that a tool call interrupts now shows as one clean Markdown message. File search puts ChatViewModel above a pile of folders named viewmodel. And on Windows, idle MCP servers no longer stall file access.

I'd update now if you steer Codex while it works, because those messages stop going missing. Side chats and GIFs are opt-in. Every change is in the Codex release notes on GitHub.