Code preview should support horizontal scrolling instead of wrapping long lines

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
52/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
macos, rust
Domain
desktop

Research direction

Start by locating the Codex Desktop App's code preview or pagination view and checking how long lines are currently laid out. Done means long lines preserve their original layout and can be inspected with horizontal scrolling or panning across code preview pages, with wrapping disabled by default.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

app enhancement
What variant of Codex are you using?

Codex Desktop App

What version of the Codex App are you using?

26.727.51351 (released Aug 1, 2026)

What platform is your computer?

macOS

What issue are you seeing?

In the code preview/pagination view, code lines that exceed the available width are wrapped onto additional lines instead of providing horizontal scrolling.

This makes long lines difficult to read and compare, especially for:

  • long function signatures
  • generated or minified code
  • URLs and file paths
  • JSON and other structured data
  • diff-style code review

The current behavior significantly reduces readability and makes the code preview feel cramped.

What is the expected behavior?

The code preview should preserve the original line layout and provide horizontal scrolling or horizontal panning when a line exceeds the viewport width.

Ideally:

  • horizontal scrolling should be available for long lines;
  • automatic line wrapping should be disabled by default in code preview;
  • an optional "Wrap lines" toggle could be provided for users who prefer wrapped text;
  • the behavior should work consistently across code preview pages.
Why this matters

Code is often easier to understand when its original line structure is preserved. Wrapping long lines changes the visual structure of code and makes it harder to inspect signatures, aligned data, paths, URLs, and diffs.

A horizontal scrollbar, trackpad horizontal pan gesture, or an explicit line-wrapping toggle would provide a much better code-reading experience.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
1k

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