[macOS Voice] Whole-display blackout, orb color change and failed-content icon; nearby GPU exits 8704

What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?

ChatGPT desktop app / Codex task UI: 26.901.51231 (build 8109), verified from installed app bundle metadata. Bundled Codex: 0.153.4.

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro.

What platform is your computer?

macOS 26.6.2 (25G83), Apple Silicon.

Platform output: Darwin 25.6.0 arm64 arm.

What issue are you seeing?

During Voice conversations, the entire Mac display briefly turns black for about one second, then returns with a small failed-content icon above the voice orb. The orb also changes color/appearance. This affects the whole display, not only the ChatGPT/Codex window. I have noticed it repeatedly.

First capture — approximately 08:02:40 EDT: the screenshot below shows the failed-content icon and cyan/blue voice orb after the display returned. It does not capture the blackout itself.

Additional capture — approximately 08:29:30 EDT: the orb appears purple/white, with a visible ‘Waiting for thread’ label. The first capture above shows a cyan/blue orb. I am also reporting this change in the orb’s color/appearance. These separate screenshots do not establish the exact timing of the color transition relative to the blackout.

Read-only inspection of the app logs found three recoverable Chromium GPU child-process abnormal exits with exit code 8704 on September 7, 2026:

UTC	America/New_York (EDT, UTC-04:00)
11:49:38.425Z	07:49:38.425
11:57:41.116Z	07:57:41.116
12:00:27.321Z	08:00:27.321

The first screenshot is labeled approximately 08:02:40 EDT. The GPU exits are nearby diagnostic events; an exact one-to-one relationship to each blackout has not been established. The whole-display blackout is my observation, and Voice causation remains unconfirmed.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

The observed sequence is:

1. Start a Voice conversation in the macOS desktop app while using the Codex task UI.
2. Continue the conversation.
3. Intermittently, the entire display flashes black for approximately one second.
4. After the display returns, a failed-content icon appears above the voice orb. I also observe a change in the orb’s color/appearance.

The exact trigger and recurrence interval have not been isolated. Whether audio or ongoing work continues through the flash is not yet verified. This is not a deterministic minimal reproduction.

Verified Feedback ID: no-active-thread-01a07bc8-6807-7300-9a9b-3d07d9ec6c67

Feedback was submitted successfully through the installed Codex App Server feedback/upload route with logs disabled and no session or attachment included.

What is the expected behavior?

Voice should remain visually stable and should not coincide with a whole-display blackout or leave failed UI content. If a graphics child process fails, the app should recover cleanly and preserve a useful diagnostic message.

Please investigate Voice orb/overlay rendering, the reported color/appearance change, and recovery around these GPU exits, including any interaction with whole-display compositing, and identify a supported workaround or fixed desktop build if available.

Additional information

A bounded filename check of system and user DiagnosticReports directories did not identify a corresponding same-day WindowServer or panic report. This does not exclude a display-server or graphics failure. Hardware failure, task loss, and the underlying cause are not established. No disruptive reproduction, restart, cache deletion, process termination, or settings change was performed for this report.

Related reports checked, without establishing an exact duplicate:

• #35101: Mac blank-window/UI flicker; its report explicitly lacks GPU-process-exit errors.
• #41038: foreground GPU load on Mac; no verified fix for this blackout signature.
• #40951: Mac Voice terminates after an AudioConverter error, a different observed error.
• #37062 and #38676: documented WindowServer crash/watchdog signatures, not established here.
• #43115: Windows Voice overlay becomes an opaque rectangle after restart; different platform and observed behavior.

Both original screenshots are attached above. No raw logs, traces, or session transcripts are attached.

Begin at the macOS Voice orb/overlay rendering path and the documented feedback/upload route, then correlate the three recorded Chromium GPU exits with the reported timestamps and screenshots. Done means isolating a reproducible trigger and confirming whether GPU recovery preserves the Voice UI, or documenting a supported workaround or fixed build; no source file or test is named.