Codex browser control unavailable across secure browser, built-in Browser and Chrome

[mb-creator262]

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

26.820.9563.0

What subscription do you have?

Business

What platform is your computer?

Windows & IOS

What issue are you seeing?

Every Codex browser route is failing.

The ChatGPT Work secure browser repeatedly enters recovery and cannot reliably create, list, navigate or interact with tabs. The latest exact errors are:

CDP operation refresh tabs was superseded by browser recovery

CDP operation refresh tabs timed out after 20000ms

The built-in Browser fails with:

Browser is not available: iab

Backend discovery found no registered in-app Browser backend.

The Chrome extension detects and reads my authenticated tab but provides no interactive control. Codex cannot click, edit, save, run tests or download files.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Feedback ID: 01a04594-5a75-71e1-8c7b-c99783482f69

What is the expected behavior?

Codex should reliably create, list and navigate tabs and provide interactive browser control through at least one supported browser route.

Additional information

Start a Codex Work chat and request a browser task.
The secure browser enters recovery and tab discovery times out.
Start a fresh conversation and clean browser session. The failure continues.
Attempt the documented recovery procedure. It does not resolve the fault.
Request the built-in Browser. It returns Browser is not available: iab.
Use Chrome with the Codex extension. Codex can read the page but cannot interact with it.

The app, browser and extension have been restarted or reinstalled roughly ten times.

I pay thousands of pounds annually for a Business subscription. These failures have persisted for several days, blocked live production work and wasted many hours.

Chats also fail to synchronise reliably with the Chrome side panel, long-running tasks repeatedly stall, and scheduled tasks have returned generic failure messages.

Please escalate this to engineering. Further instructions to reinstall or repeat the same recovery steps are not a resolution.

[github-actions]

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

• [macOS][Chrome extension][regression] Browser controls no longer working #39972
• Repeated Browser runtime attachment failure a #41186
• Browser runtime permanently caches empty provider discovery #41168
• Cloud browser handoff freezes, tab switching fails, and session cannot be truly reset #39950

Powered by Codex Action

[pilcherd]

Unable to use the browser from codex on latest build here too.

Browser control tool available: undefined

agent unable to browse. I opened. I've quit and restarted. No change.

[Chatter6969]

I’m seeing a very similar issue on Windows with ChatGPT Business.

Codex App version:
26.825.31414
Powered by Codex & OWL

My built-in browser opens and Codex receives the current URL through ambient browser state, but no callable browser-control or CDP tools are exposed.

In Settings I can see:
“In-app browser plugin unavailable”

Codex cannot access:

• DOM / page state
• screenshots
• click / type interaction
• Console
• Network
• Performance
• Full CDP

I also see under Computer Use → Google Chrome:
“Disabled by your organization or unavailable in your region.”

The inconsistent part is that the browser UI itself still opens and Codex can see the current URL, but the interactive browser backend/capability is missing.

I have already:

• updated to 26.825.31414
• restarted the app
• tested in a fresh Codex session
• enabled Codex permissions in the Business workspace

This looks related to the same browser backend/runtime discovery issue described here, rather than a local configuration problem.

[GavinLiu-cl]

windows sandbox failed: helper_unknown_error: apply deny-read ACLs

trusted Node process exited unexpectedly; kernel reset, rerun your request

Codex App version:
26.825.32147

OS:
Windows11

[mariadottir]

Reproduced on macOS 26.5.2 (25F84) with Google Chrome 151.0.7922.175, bundled Chrome plugin 26.825.51511, and ChatGPT Chrome extension 1.26.827.12125_0.

Duration: This has been happening repeatedly for approximately two weeks. It is not a one-off outage or a new single-session failure; it has disrupted daily browser-assisted work throughout that period.

This is an intermittent session-collapse variant of the same browser-control failure:

• Chrome is running.
• The extension is installed, registered, and enabled in the selected Chrome profile.
• The native-host manifest exists, has the expected host name, and contains both expected extension origins.
• Initial browser discovery and tab listing succeed.
• Codex can open/navigate an authenticated tab and sometimes complete a few DOM reads.
• After roughly 10–15 minutes (often after only 2–3 public pages), tab interaction stops responding. Observed failures include native pipe is closed, Browser is not available: <ephemeral backend id>, and browser-operation timeouts that reset the JavaScript session.
• Reconnecting can restore control temporarily. Reinstalling/restarting does not provide a durable fix.
• The documented recovery step of opening a clean Chrome window was tried. A fresh window and a claimed blank user tab both loaded the target page, but the extension disconnected before the already-loaded page could be read.
• Interrupted operations were read-only; no uncertain mutations were retried.

Impact: this blocks long-running authenticated browser workflows that must preserve live state and verify each transaction. Repeated recovery consumes substantial paid time/usage and requires constant user intervention, so the integration is not usable for production work.

Expected: the Chrome backend/native pipe should remain attached for the full Codex task. If the transport drops, the runtime should either rebind safely to the same authorized browser instance or fail fast with a stable, actionable diagnostic instead of requiring repeated reinstalls.

Private site names, URLs, account details, local usernames/paths, and page contents are intentionally omitted. Please investigate Chrome backend/session lifetime and native-pipe stability on current macOS builds.