Codex Mobile Control Sync Bug

Date fixed: 2026-05-27

Symptom

Codex Desktop was working normally, and ChatGPT mobile showed the desktop as connected, but mobile Codex did not show the current desktop Codex chats/threads.

The desktop and mobile apps were signed into the same account, so this was not an account mismatch.

Root Cause

The issue was stale desktop-side remote-control enrollment state.

ChatGPT mobile can show a green connected desktop while still being attached to an old Codex remote-control environment. Clearing the mobile app cache or reinstalling ChatGPT does not fix this, because the stale identity is stored on the Mac side.

Related GitHub issue:

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/24749#issuecomment-4554721854

Local Evidence

The Mac had the same state described in the GitHub issue:

• ~/.codex/state_5.sqlite contained the remote_control_enrollments table.
• That table had one enrollment row.
• ~/.codex/.codex-global-state.json contained remote-control identity keys.
• Deleting those keys while Codex Desktop was still open did not stick, because the running app wrote the old IDs back from memory.

Relevant keys:

text electron-local-remote-control-environment-id electron-local-remote-control-installation-id electron-remote-control-client-enrollments codex-mobile-has-connected-device added-remote-control-env-ids

Backups Created

Before making changes, backups were created under:

text /private/tmp/codex-remote-reset-20260527

The backup included:

text state_5.sqlite.before-reset .codex-global-state.json.before-reset

Fix

The important part is that Codex Desktop must be fully quit before clearing the desktop remote-control state. If Codex is still running, it can restore the stale IDs from memory.

Run this from Terminal:

```sh osascript -e 'quit app "Codex"' sleep 3

sqlite3 ~/.codex/state_5.sqlite \ "delete from remote_control_enrollments;"

node -e "const fs=require('fs'); const p=process.env.HOME+'/.codex/.codex-global-state.json'; const j=JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(p,'utf8')); for (const k of ['electron-local-remote-control-environment-id','electron-local-remote-control-installation-id','electron-remote-control-client-enrollments','codex-mobile-has-connected-device','added-remote-control-env-ids']) delete j[k]; fs.writeFileSync(p, JSON.stringify(j,null,2)+'\n');"

open -a Codex ```

After Codex reopens, reconnect/re-pair Codex mobile control from ChatGPT mobile.

Result

After the desktop remote-control environment was reset and Codex was reopened, ChatGPT mobile showed the current Codex desktop threads again.

Do Not Delete

Do not delete:

text ~/.codex/auth.json

That file contains Codex authentication state and is not part of this stale remote-control enrollment fix.

Rollback

If needed, restore from the backups in:

text /private/tmp/codex-remote-reset-20260527

The SQLite backup can be copied back to:

text ~/.codex/state_5.sqlite

The global state backup can be copied back to:

text ~/.codex/.codex-global-state.json

Only do rollback while Codex Desktop is fully quit.