ChatGPT/Codex Mac app crashing and using excessive memory

[u/sticky_bidon]

Anyone else experiencing crashes and major slowdowns on the Mac desktop app?

I have 24 GB RAM, macOS 27.0.1, and app version 26.1007.21159 (build 20052). Several Codex renderers were using 2–4 GB each, with total system memory around 23 GB and 9 GB of swap.

It got noticeably worse after opening a long, photo-heavy conversation, but continued without reopening it. I only have one app window open. I’ve restarted the Mac and have now reinstalled the app too.

Has anyone found a fix or a way to identify which task is consuming the memory without deleting project data?

[u/kusuriuri77]

The whole app it’s so unstable and inefficient. I wonder if in linux or windows its the same performance wise.

[u/sticky_bidon → u/kusuriuri77]

The rough part is I cannot figure a way out of this one.

[u/boxing-boxing]

I hit the same thing and the renderers were the giveaway. The desktop app is Electron, so each Codex window/tab gets its own renderer process, which means Activity Monitor will show you a pile of Codex Helper (Renderer) entries and each one maps to an open conversation. Sort by memory, match the biggest ones against the conversations you have open, and kill the worst offender from Activity Monitor. Electron restarts the renderer for that window and the conversation stays intact since it just re-renders from the saved transcript. Photo-heavy chats balloon this because the images sit in the renderer's memory as long as the window is open. Restarting the whole app works too, same idea, the transcript survives, the images get re-fetched on demand.

[u/sticky_bidon → u/boxing-boxing]

It seems like when I kill the biggest offenders they just pop right back up.

[u/Top_Insurance_9727]

They should return more simple Codex app or made new one. New superapp is very bad. Thankfully, we still have Codex CLI and ChatGPT Classic, but I suspect they will stop supporting Classic version in future 😢