openai / openai/codex

Codex Desktop: support continuous vertical scrolling in PDF sidebar viewer

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app enhancement
Dominant language
Rust
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Description

Feature request

Codex Desktop's right-side PDF viewer currently presents PDFs one page at a time. To move between pages, the user has to click the previous/next page controls.

For reading papers, reports, and other multi-page documents, this is much less convenient than the standard PDF interaction used by browsers and macOS Preview.

Desired behavior

Please add a continuous vertical scrolling mode to the PDF sidebar viewer:

  • Mouse-wheel scrolling should move naturally through the current page and continue onto the next/previous page.
  • Trackpad two-finger scrolling should work the same way.
  • Pages should be stacked vertically in a continuous document view rather than requiring explicit page-button navigation.
  • The existing previous/next page controls can remain available for quick jumps.
  • Ideally, preserve the current scroll/page position when switching away from the PDF and back.

A single-page mode could remain available as an option, but continuous scrolling would be a much better default for document-reading workflows.

Why this matters

Codex is increasingly useful for workflows involving papers, generated reports, specifications, and other PDFs. When reviewing a long PDF alongside a Codex conversation, repeatedly moving the pointer to click a page-navigation icon interrupts reading flow. Continuous trackpad/mouse scrolling would make the sidebar substantially more usable for document-heavy work.

Expected interaction

  1. Open a multi-page PDF in the right sidebar.
  2. Scroll downward with the mouse wheel or trackpad.
  3. When reaching the bottom of page N, scrolling continues directly into page N+1.
  4. Scroll upward to move back across page boundaries.

This should behave similarly to the continuous-scroll modes in browser PDF viewers and macOS Preview.

Related issues

  • #22095 — file viewer scroll-position / keyboard paging behavior
  • #26931 — inconsistent PDF viewer behavior depending on how the PDF is opened

Those appear adjacent but do not specifically request continuous vertical cross-page scrolling for PDFs.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the Codex Desktop PDF sidebar viewer and reviewing related issues #22095 and #26931 for existing scrolling and position behavior. Reproduce the current page-at-a-time navigation with a multi-page PDF, then verify that mouse-wheel and trackpad scrolling cross page boundaries while the existing controls remain usable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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