Codex Desktop remote control remains connected but unusable after remote device revoked permission, and cannot be deleted or re-authorized

[CarryJone]

Body:
I have two Codex Desktop/App Server devices signed into the same ChatGPT account.

Device A: macOS 26.4.1, Codex Desktop 26.513.31313, bundled codex-cli 0.131.0-alpha.9
Device B: gaoshaoyudeMac-Studio.local, app-server 0.131.0-alpha.9

What happened:

1. Device A could previously control Device B from Settings > Connections > Control other devices.
2. On Device B, access/permission for Device A was revoked by mistake.
3. After that, Device A still shows Device B under “Devices you can control from this Mac” as connected/online.
4. Trying to connect no longer works.
5. The UI does not allow me to delete Device B because the remote-control environment is still reported as online.
6. I also cannot force a clean re-authorization flow from Device A.

Observed diagnostics:

• GET /codex/remote/control/environments returns Device B as online: true.
• Device B appears as client_type CODEX_CLI / CODEX_DESKTOP_APP app-server 0.131.0-alpha.9 depending on the environment.
• Local state contains selected-remote-host-id and added-remote-control-env-ids for the stale remote-control environment.
• Clearing local state did not resolve the problem, so I restored it.

Expected behavior:
After a remote device revokes controller permission, the controlling Codex app should either:

• show that access is revoked and provide a re-authorize flow, or
• allow removing the stale remote-control device locally, even if the remote environment is still online.

Actual behavior:
The device remains shown as connected/online, but control does not work, and there is no apparent way to delete or re-authorize it from the UI.

Please advise whether there is a supported command or UI flow to revoke/reset a remote-control client enrollment and re-authorize the device pair.

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• Revoked remote control access for a device, connections remain on ChatGPT mobile app without a way to delete, cannot pair again #22700
• Codex mobile remote access can reuse revoked enrollment and connect to the wrong Mac #23339
• Codex mobile Remote Control stale host cannot be removed and QR pairing fails #22714
• Codex mobile stale Remote Control host cannot be removed after Mac hostname change / codex feedback : no-active-thread-019e3bc9-0329-7672-9add-4731a5fccc86 #23321
• Codex android chatgpt Remote Control can only connect to windows codex app and cant switch to mac codex app #22765

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[Sakura125809]

I’m seeing the same failure mode.

After revoking one controller device from the target device, signing out/in and reinstalling Codex Desktop did not recover the relationship. The UI still shows the remote-control environment as available, but connecting fails.

The more specific Desktop log error I found was:

Remote-control client has been revoked

I also saw the client trying to refresh an existing enrollment before failing, roughly in this pattern:

remote_control_client_refresh_start_request hasExistingEnrollment=true
app_server_connection.transport_connect_failed ... "Remote-control client has been revoked"

Update: the workaround below does not appear to be effective on newer versions. It may only apply to older Codex Desktop versions, so please treat it as version-specific context rather than a current fix.

For older Codex Desktop versions on macOS, the workaround was to fully quit Codex Desktop first, then clear the persisted remote-control enrollment state:

cd ~/.codex

jq 'del(."electron-remote-control-client-enrollments",
        ."added-remote-control-env-ids",
        ."electron-local-remote-control-environment-id",
        ."electron-local-remote-control-installation-id")
| .["remote-projects"] |= map(select((.hostId // "") | startswith("remote-control:") | not))
| .["remote-connection-auto-connect-by-host-id"] |= with_entries(select(.key | startswith("remote-control:") | not))' \
.codex-global-state.json > /tmp/codex-state.json && mv /tmp/codex-state.json .codex-global-state.json

cp .codex-global-state.json .codex-global-state.json.bak

sqlite3 state_5.sqlite 'delete from remote_control_enrollments;'

Then reopen Codex Desktop and re-enable/re-authorize Remote Control.

Local cleanup of .codex/.codex-global-state.json alone was not enough in my case because Codex could recreate or retain state. I also found related persisted state in .codex/state_5.sqlite, table remote_control_enrollments.

This looks like the app needs a supported “forget/re-authorize remote-control client” flow when the server says the client has been revoked, instead of treating the stale environment as online and continuing to reuse the revoked enrollment.

[love9522]

Same issue showing connected but saying "Failed to update connection".

[Sakura125809]

Have you tried it in the comments above? I’ve encountered this problem too, and the method mentioned above worked.