macOS system dictation causes severe block-pattern TUI corruption in Apple Terminal (CLI 0.154.0)

macOS dictation causes severe block-pattern rendering corruption in Apple Terminal

Environment

• Codex CLI 0.154.0, installed via npm (@openai/codex). npm latest checked on 2026-09-16: 0.154.0.
• macOS 27.0 (26A428), arm64.
• Apple Terminal.app 2.15. Confirmed through Codex parent process chain.
• TERM=xterm-256color.
• Model shown in TUI: gpt-6-astra.
• Input: macOS system dictation, German.

Reproduction reported by user

1. Start an interactive Codex CLI conversation in Apple Terminal.
2. Activate macOS system dictation and dictate a multi-line message.
3. Around the second line, the UI repeatedly becomes severely corrupted: large gray rectangular bands and grid-like blocks replace text across the transcript and input area. Some text remains visible.
4. Stop dictation and submit the message. Codex can still receive and answer messages, despite the visual corruption.

Expected

Dictated text should appear normally, and transcript/input/status areas should remain readable.

Actual and impact

Repeated severe visual corruption makes dictation unusable and obscures the context/status display. The user perceives hanging; a process crash has NOT been confirmed. Normal keyboard typing reportedly does not trigger the issue.

Attempted workaround

Restarted/resumed using codex resume --no-alt-screen. The same corruption recurred. Switching terminal apps has not been tested and is not an acceptable ongoing workaround for this user.

Evidence and scope

Multiple screenshots were supplied locally by the user and show the repeated block-pattern corruption. They contain unrelated private/business conversation, so are not attached publicly. No audio/video recording was collected. The agent verified environment/version information but cannot independently reproduce live user dictation.

Possibly related: https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/7441 (macOS dictation/IME input issue), but its invisible-input symptoms differ; this report does not assume a shared root cause.

Please investigate the interaction between system dictation/composition and TUI rendering in Apple Terminal on this macOS build.

Start with the interactive Codex CLI TUI and reproduce the reported steps using macOS system dictation in Apple Terminal, including a run with codex resume --no-alt-screen. Compare dictation/composition input with normal typing and inspect when transcript and input rendering become corrupted; done means dictated text and all TUI areas remain readable without block-pattern corruption.