[macOS] Voice stopped working: 403 "Voice session access denied" on /v1/live

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

26.908.70816 (build 9275)

What subscription do you have?

ChatGPT Pro

What platform is your computer?

macOS 27.0; uname -mprs: Darwin 27.0.0 arm64 arm

What issue are you seeing?

Voice worked on September 14, 2026, but on September 15 it fails to start in both brand-new and existing tasks. Text chat is currently working.

The persistent error is:

unexpected status 403 Forbidden: Voice session access denied., url: https://api.openai.com/v1/live

This still occurs after restarting the app, signing out and back in, reinstalling the app, and testing with both custom connection overrides removed.

In-app feedback was successfully submitted. Feedback ID: 01a0a59b-b6ae-76c3-8fc9-3d93d1937cdf.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open the Codex desktop app on macOS and sign in using ChatGPT.
2. Start a brand-new task (also reproduced in existing tasks).
3. Click the voice-call button.
4. Startup fails with HTTP 403 "Voice session access denied" from https://api.openai.com/v1/live.

Troubleshooting already performed:

• Restarted the app.
• Signed out of ChatGPT and back in.
• Uninstalled/reinstalled the app.
• Backed up config.toml and temporarily removed both openai_base_url and experimental_realtime_webrtc_call_base_url; a subsequent call attempt still returned the same 403. This was a connection-settings test, not a wipe of all configuration.

The default-connection test returned cf-ray a3b968f46c26a88e-DFW. Later logged failures at 13:11:42, 13:11:50, and 13:11:59 America/Chicago on September 15 returned the same error; the 13:11:59 attempt had cf-ray a3b998d7bf5366c5-DFW.

What is the expected behavior?

The voice call should connect, as it did the previous day. If voice eligibility or availability has changed, the app should explain the restriction and how to resolve it rather than only displaying a raw 403.

Additional information

Initial routing context: the app originally used an Ollama proxy via openai_base_url = "http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/codex/v1". At that stage, voice startup returned:

{"error":"prepare Codex request for OpenAI: invalid character '-' in numeric literal"}

The proxy logged POST /v1/live returning HTTP 400. Adding experimental_realtime_webrtc_call_base_url = "https://api.openai.com/v1" bypassed that parsing error but exposed the persistent 403. Crucially, removing BOTH overrides for a separate test also returned 403, so the remaining failure is reproducible without that proxy route.

Authentication was verified as ChatGPT sign-in with no API key configured. No credentials or full private logs are included here; please use the submitted feedback ID for diagnostics.

A search for the exact error found #35094, but that report describes successful call creation followed by a sideband 404; this report concerns call startup being denied with 403. The root cause here is not yet established.

Start by reproducing the macOS voice-call failure against https://api.openai.com/v1/live with both connection overrides removed, then compare the reported 403 with the submitted feedback ID and the listed request timestamps and cf-ray values. Done means identifying whether the denial is an app or service issue and ensuring the user receives a usable explanation instead of only the raw 403.