This release of codex-cli, version 0.163.0, introduces significant usability and performance enhancements. The `/config` panel has been overhauled, now offering a searchable interface to preferences across categories, allowing immediate changes to supported settings, and clearly indicating which modifications require a restart. This greatly improves the discoverability and management of Codex's extensive configuration options, making it easier for developers to tailor their environment without guesswork.
Key new features include instant steering of Codex responses: you can now send follow-up input while Codex is still generating a response, immediately guiding its output and interrupting any active Code Mode cells or nested tool calls. This provides a much more interactive and efficient workflow. A configurable leader key has been added to `/keymap`, defaulting to `Ctrl+X`, which streamlines common shortcuts and moves voice mute to `F9`. For daemon management, you can now restart managed background servers directly from `/daemon`, with Codex providing warnings about potential work interruptions and automatically reconnecting. Performance is boosted by parallel execution for read-only tools, including skill, memory, and conversation-history lookups, leading to faster information retrieval. Daybreak is now enabled by default for eligible accounts, and `codex exec` can leverage it with an OpenAI API key.
Several important bug fixes improve stability and user experience. Thread permissions and network approvals are now correctly restored when resuming saved threads, respecting overrides and managed policies. The network proxy has enhanced security by checking permissions before DNS lookups, rejecting duplicate `Host` headers, and preventing credential aliases from bypassing inspection hooks. Side conversations are better managed, allowing users to return to existing ones with `/side` after switching threads, and pending prompts correctly route answers back to their originating thread. Windows users benefit from improved clipboard handling, with `Ctrl+V` and `Shift+Insert` now pasting both text and images, and WSL clipboard operations are more robust. `codex exec` no longer prints redundant file diffs, and local/remote commands handle output pipes more reliably.
A breaking change in this release is the removal of the bundled patched `zsh` shell executor; Codex now exclusively uses its standard shell executor. Users with configurations relying on the retired shell flags will receive a migration notice and should update their setups accordingly. Upgrading is recommended for all users to benefit from the improved configurability, interactive steering, performance gains, and critical bug fixes, especially those impacting security and workflow stability.