OpenAI has rolled out a major update to its Codex desktop app that gives the AI coding assistant far more control over your computer — and puts it in direct competition with Anthropic’s Claude Code.
The update, announced in mid-April 2026, arrives as the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic over AI-powered coding tools intensifies. Anthropic’s Claude Code has been widely adopted by businesses as a go-to coding solution, but OpenAI is pushing back hard with a sweeping overhaul of Codex designed to make it a far more capable and versatile tool.
What’s New in Codex
The most significant addition is what OpenAI calls “background computer use.” With this feature, Codex can now see, click, and type across any app on your Mac using its own cursor — all while running in the background without interrupting whatever you’re working on. Multiple agents can run simultaneously in parallel, handling separate tasks at the same time.
OpenAI describes this as allowing Codex to function like a coding partner that handles auxiliary work while you focus on your main tasks. The company lists iterating on frontend changes, testing apps, and working in software that does not expose an API as prime use cases for this kind of agentic assistance.
The computer use feature is currently available on macOS, with plans to expand it to users in the EU and UK in the near future.
A Browser, Image Generation, and Smarter Memory
Alongside background computer use, Codex also gains an in-app browser. Users can leave comments directly on web pages to give the agent specific instructions. OpenAI says this will be useful for frontend and game development, and the company plans to eventually expand the capability so Codex can fully control the browser beyond localhost web applications.
Codex can now generate and refine images using GPT-Image-1.5. This supports the creation of product concepts, frontend designs, mockups, game assets, and other visual materials — all within the same workflow.
A preview of a new memory feature has also been introduced. It allows Codex to remember preferences, past corrections, and context gathered from previous sessions. According to OpenAI, this helps future tasks complete faster and with a level of quality that previously required detailed custom instructions. Codex can also suggest what to work on next by pulling context from projects, connected tools, and memory — including surfaces like open pull request comments from tools such as Slack or Notion.
Deeper Developer Workflows
The update also adds new developer-specific tools. Codex can now review GitHub pull requests, run multiple terminal tabs at once, and connect to remote development environments over SSH in an alpha release. A sidebar supports rich file previews, including PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, and documents.
Automations allow Codex to reuse existing conversation threads and preserve previously built context. The agent can schedule future work for itself and continue long-running tasks, potentially spanning days or weeks.
OpenAI is also adding over 90 new plugin integrations, covering skills, app integrations, and MCP servers. These include tools such as Atlassian Rovo, CircleCI, GitLab Issues, and Microsoft tools, expanding Codex’s ability to gather context and take action across a developer’s full toolchain. TechCrunch reported the total new plugin count as 111.
As an example of what this means in practice, OpenAI says Codex can now scan your Slack channels and Google Calendar and generate a prioritized to-do list for your day.
Agents SDK Gets a Security Upgrade
Alongside the Codex update, OpenAI also announced a significant update to its Agents SDK. The updated SDK gives developers the infrastructure to build agents that can inspect files, run commands, edit code, and manage tasks within secure, controlled sandbox environments.
The new model-native harness allows agents to work closely with files and tools on a computer, while native sandbox execution ensures that tasks run safely in isolated environments. Agents can run in one or multiple sandboxes, route sub-agents to separate environments, and execute tasks in parallel across containers.
Sandbox execution is built directly into the updated SDK. Developers can use their own sandbox or choose from built-in support for providers, including Blaxel, Cloudflare, Daytona, E2B, Modal, Runloop, and Vercel. The SDK also introduces a Manifest abstraction for describing the agent’s workspace, with support for storage providers including AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Cloudflare R2.
To address security, the architecture separates the harness and compute layers, keeping credentials outside model-generated execution environments. If a sandbox container is lost during a run, the SDK can restore agent state in a new container and continue from the last checkpoint.
“The OpenAI Agents SDK has enabled complex legal drafting and workflows by providing a unified framework with built-in safeguards and secure, isolated environments for data processing and code execution,” said Min Chen, Chief AI Officer at LexisNexis.
The new harness and sandbox capabilities are launching first in Python, with TypeScript support planned for a future release.
OpenAI vs. Anthropic: The AI Coding Race
The broader context for these announcements is a closely watched competition between OpenAI and Anthropic. Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding assistant, has been the preferred tool for many businesses, according to TechCrunch. Some of the features OpenAI is now adding to Codex resemble capabilities Anthropic released for Claude Code last month, when Anthropic announced that Claude could remotely control a user’s Mac and desktop while they were away from their keyboard.
OpenAI has also introduced a pay-as-you-go pricing option for Codex aimed at ChatGPT Enterprise and Business customers, giving organizations more flexibility in how they access and pay for the tool.
The Codex update is available starting now across all ChatGPT plans. Personalization features, including memory and context-aware suggestions, will roll out to Enterprise, Edu, and users in the EU and UK soon.
