Skip to content

Inconsistent scrollback / output rendering behavior on Windows Terminal vs macOS terminal #15380

@zhatlas

Description

@zhatlas

What version of Codex CLI is running?

codex-cli 0.116.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which model were you using?

No response

What platform is your computer?

No response

What terminal emulator and version are you using (if applicable)?

No response

What issue are you seeing?

When using Codex CLI on macOS, the terminal output behaves normally — scrollback works, and the UI rendering is stable.

However, on Windows (especially when using Windows Terminal with WSL or PowerShell), I frequently encounter rendering issues:

  • Scrollback does not work correctly (older output disappears or cannot be accessed)
  • Output is sometimes overwritten or re-rendered incorrectly
  • Text may appear duplicated or partially missing
  • Scrolling during streaming output can cause content to be cut or misaligned

This issue appears consistently on Windows Terminal, but does not reproduce on macOS terminal environments (e.g., iTerm2 / default Terminal with similar configurations).

This suggests a platform-specific compatibility issue between Codex CLI TUI rendering and Windows terminal emulators.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

  1. Open Windows Terminal (PowerShell or WSL)
  2. Run codex
  3. Send a prompt that produces long output (longer than one screen)
  4. While output is streaming:
    • Try scrolling up
    • Or wait until output finishes and then scroll
  5. Observe:
    • Earlier content is missing or cannot be scrolled back to
    • Output may be overwritten, duplicated, or visually corrupted
      Control experiment:
  6. Repeat the same steps on macOS (Terminal or iTerm2)
  7. Observe that:
    • Scrollback works normally
    • Output rendering is stable and consistent

What is the expected behavior?

No response

Additional information

No response

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    TUIIssues related to the terminal user interface: text input, menus and dialogs, and terminal displaybugSomething isn't workingwindows-osIssues related to Codex on Windows systems

    Type

    No type
    No fields configured for issues without a type.

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions