Why does Codex use the system node installation over NVM? Using node v16 constantly

[lightninglu10]

What version of Codex is running?

codex-cli 0.46.0

Which model were you using?

gpt-5-codex-high

What platform is your computer?

Darwin 24.6.0 arm64 arm

What steps can reproduce the bug?

I'm trying to use codex and have it run CLI commands, but it always wants to run it in a node 16 environment. Why? Claude code doesn't do that. I have other node environments installed and I'm running codex from a node v20 environment, but it always thinks or is in a v16 environment

What is the expected behavior?

Codex runs in whatever environment you start it with

What do you see instead?

It only runs in v16

Additional information

No response

[Femoon]

I encountered the same problem on macOS. The workaround is to uninstall the system's Node, and then Codex will use the Node from NVM when executing CLI commands.

[lightninglu10]

I encountered the same problem on macOS. The workaround is to uninstall the system's Node, and then Codex will use the Node from NVM when executing CLI commands.

That is an awful workaround :(, hoping the Codex team can fix this!

System node is needed for a lot of random mac processes, just like the system python is.