OpenAI releases Codex for Windows

OpenAI today released the Codex app for Windows, powered by OpenAI’s frontier coding models, and it’s now the only coding agent with a first-class Windows experience. According to a 2025 survey from Stack Overflow, nearly 50% of developers use Windows for professional use and more than 55% use it for personal use.

The Codex Windows app is built for real Windows developer environments — not just Windows compatibility — providing native sandboxing and native workflows so that devs can stay in the tools and environments they already use without falling back to WSL or VMs for safety. With the Codex app, developers can:

• Command multiple agents working asynchronously across projects
• Delegate and schedule repeatable work using Automations
• Go beyond code generation using Skills that connect agents to tools and workflows
• Review, guide, and intervene in agent work without losing context

This launch comes amid the rapid adoption of Codex. Since the beginning of the year, weekly active users have grown 3x to more than 1.6M and usage has grown more than five times. OpenAI is launching the Windows app just a few weeks after it launched the Codex desktop app for MacOS, which was downloaded more than 1 million times in the first week. Since announcing the Windows app, OpenAI amassed more than 500,000 developers on a waitlist.

The easiest way to use Codex on Windows is to use the Codex app. You can also set up the IDE extension or install the CLI and run it from PowerShell.

Windows sandbox

Native Windows sandbox support includes two modes that you can configure in config.toml:

[windows]
sandbox = "unelevated" # or "elevated"

How elevated mode works:

• Uses a Restricted Token approach with filesystem ACLs to limit which files the sandbox can write to.
• Runs commands as a dedicated Windows Sandbox User.
• Limits network access by installing Windows Firewall rules.

Grant sandbox read access

When a command fails because the Windows sandbox can’t read a directory, use:

/sandbox-add-read-dir C:\absolute\directory\path

The path must be an existing absolute directory. After the command succeeds, later commands that run in the sandbox can read that directory during the current session.

Windows Subsystem for Linux

Launch VS Code from inside WSL

For step-by-step instructions, see the official VS Code WSL tutorial.

Prerequisites

• Windows with WSL installed. To install WSL, open PowerShell as an administrator, then run wsl –install (Ubuntu is a common choice).
• VS Code with the WSL extension installed.

Open VS Code from a WSL terminal

# From your WSL shell

cd ~/code/your-project
code .

This opens a WSL remote window, installs the VS Code Server if needed, and ensures integrated terminals run in Linux.

Confirm you’re connected to WSL

• Look for the green status bar that shows

  WSL: <distro>.

• Integrated terminals should display Linux paths (such as /home/…) instead of C:\.
• You can verify with:

  echo $WSL_DISTRO_NAME

  This prints your distribution name.

If you don’t see “WSL: …” in the status bar, press Ctrl+Shift+P, pick WSL: Reopen Folder in WSL, and keep your repository under /home/… (not C:\) for best performance.

Use Codex CLI with WSL

Run these commands from an elevated PowerShell or Windows Terminal:

# Install default Linux distribution (like Ubuntu)
wsl --install

# Start a shell inside Windows Subsystem for Linux
wsl

Then run these commands from your WSL shell:

# https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/javascript/nodejs-on-wsl
# Install Node.js in WSL (via nvm)
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/master/install.sh | bash

# In a new tab or after exiting and running `wsl` again to install Node.js
nvm install 22

# Install and run Codex in WSL
npm i -g @openai/codex
codex

Working on code inside WSL

Working in Windows-mounted paths like /mnt/c/… can be slower than working in Windows-native paths. Keep your repositories under your Linux home directory (like ~/code/my-app) for faster I/O and fewer symlink and permission issues:

mkdir -p ~/code && cd ~/code
git clone https://github.com/your/repo.git
cd repo

If you need Windows access to files, they’re under \wsl$\Ubuntu\home<user> in Explorer.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Installed extension, but it’s unresponsive

Your system may be missing C++ development tools, which some native dependencies require:

• Visual Studio Build Tools (C++ workload)
• Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64)
• With winget, run winget install –id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools -e

Then fully restart VS Code after installation.

If it feels slow on large repositories

• Make sure you’re not working under /mnt/c. Move the repository to WSL (for example, ~/code/…).
• Increase memory and CPU for WSL if needed; update WSL to the latest version:

wsl --update
wsl --shutdown

VS Code in WSL can’t find codex

Verify the binary exists and is on PATH inside WSL:

which codex || echo "codex not found"

If the binary isn’t found, install it by following the instructions above.

When you run Codex natively on Windows, agent mode uses a Windows sandbox to block filesystem writes outside the working folder and prevent network access without your explicit approval. 

Codex is available through all ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu accounts today. Codex can be used seamlessly across the app, CLI, IDE extension, and cloud with a single ChatGPT account. All surfaces use the same underlying Codex system and session history, while the app introduces a new form factor designed as a command center for agents—meeting developers wherever they code.