[Windows][26.915.4065.0] Renderer memory leak grows to 4–7 GB and repeatedly crashes; rollback to 26.903.9818.0 appears stable

Summary

On Windows x64, Codex Desktop 26.915.4065.0 repeatedly crashes/reloads its renderer process after very rapid memory growth.

This reproduces even with a very light workload / a single simple thread.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11 x64
• Codex Desktop: 26.915.4065.0
• Package: OpenAI.Codex
• Architecture: x64

Observed behavior

Crashpad repeatedly recorded renderer crashes:

{"capture_kind":"crash","osarch":"x86_64","ptype":"renderer"}

Five renderer crashes occurred within ~5 minutes.

During reproduction:

• One renderer process grew to ~4.1–4.2 GB RAM
• Total Codex process group reached roughly 5–7 GB
• The UI then crashed/reloaded and a new renderer process appeared

Windows Event Viewer did not show a conventional top-level ChatGPT.exe crash, which is consistent with only the renderer child process dying while the main process remains alive.

Mitigations attempted

Launching with the following flags did not stop the crashes:

--disable-gpu
--disable-gpu-compositing
--disable-direct-composition

Rollback result

The app was downgraded in-place to:

26.903.9818.0

using the same Windows profile, the same local Codex data, and the same projects/history.

Immediately after rollback:

• Total Codex memory usage stayed around ~1–2 GB while actively running a task
• Largest renderer processes stayed around a few hundred MB
• No renderer crashes were observed during the initial test period

This strongly suggests a regression in newer Windows Desktop builds rather than a problem with the local project/history.

Version history on this machine before rollback

26.903.9818.0
26.908.4834.0
26.908.9136.0
26.911.7940.0
26.915.3509.0
26.915.4065.0

The instability was observed on the newer builds and was severe on 26.915.4065.0.

Expected behavior

Renderer memory should remain bounded during normal usage and the UI should not repeatedly crash/reload.

If useful, I can provide additional Crashpad artifacts or process-memory snapshots, but I have intentionally omitted any personal paths or user data from this report.

Start by reproducing the issue on Windows 11 x64 with Codex Desktop 26.915.4065.0, then compare renderer memory and Crashpad behavior with the stable 26.903.9818.0 build. Review the renderer process lifecycle and recent changes between the listed versions. Done means normal usage keeps renderer memory bounded and no repeated renderer crashes or UI reloads occur.