ChatGPT macOS app leaks zombie (defunct) child processes — exhausts per-user process limit

ChatGPT Bugs
1

**App version:** ChatGPT 26.730.61639 (embedded Codex Framework 151.0.7922.71)

**OS:** macOS 14 (Darwin 23.2.0), Apple Silicon

**Description**

The ChatGPT desktop app continuously accumulates `` (zombie) child processes without reaping them. The parent is the main `ChatGPT` process, and the leak traces to the embedded Codex `app-server` / `code-mode-host` chain (`codex app-server` → `node_repl` / `codex-code-mode-host`).

**Leak rate:** ~36 zombies/minute. The single ChatGPT process becomes the PPID of hundreds of `` children that are never reaped.

**Impact**

On macOS the per-user process limit (`kern.maxprocperuid`) is 2666. At this leak rate the app exhausts the process table in roughly an hour, after which the whole system can no longer fork new processes — every shell and app throws `fork failed: resource temporarily unavailable` until ChatGPT is quit. Quitting ChatGPT lets launchd immediately reap all zombies, confirming the app is the sole cause.

**Likely root cause**

Child processes are `fork()`ed but the parent never calls `wait()`/`waitpid()` to reap them.

**Steps to reproduce**

1. Launch the ChatGPT desktop app and leave it running (idle is enough; the code-mode/agent host spawns subprocesses).

2. Periodically run: `ps -eo ppid,stat | awk ‘$2==<ChatGPT_PID> && $3 ~ /Z/’ | wc -l`

3. Observe the zombie count climb steadily and never drop.

**Live evidence (captured on my machine)**

```

ps -p (pgrep -x ChatGPT) -o pid,etime,command

PID ELAPSED COMMAND

59492 19:55 /Applications/ChatGPT.app/Contents/MacOS/ChatGPT

# zombie children of the ChatGPT process, two samples 20s apart:

18:09:02 → 706 zombies

18:09:22 → 718 zombies (+12 in 20 s)

```

After only ~20 minutes of uptime the single ChatGPT process already owned 718 `` children, still climbing at a steady ~36/min. Left running it reaches the 2666 per-user cap and takes the whole system down with `fork failed`.

**Expected:** child processes are reaped; zombie count stays near zero.

**Actual:** zombies grow unbounded until the OS per-user process limit is hit.

2

Welcome to the forum!

You are welcome to discuss Codex issues on the forum, however the official place to report and track them is the GitHub issue tracker for OpenAI Codex.

I had ChatGPT look for the closest related issue and it identified:

If that issue matches your problem, consider adding a :+1: reaction on the GitHub issue page itself, not just on the forum topic, as reactions on GitHub help the developers gauge impact and prioritize work.

If it is not the same issue, try searching the existing GitHub issues for a closer match. If you cannot find one, then open a new issue with as much detail as possible.

3

If it helps with correlating, this issue cropped up for me after updating and it is consistent. I need to quit out of the ChatGPT / Codex desktop app regularly now to reclaim processes.

4

same problem for me！When can this bug be fixed?

5

The macOS issue that could accumulate zombie child processes until the per-user process limit was exhausted is addressed in ChatGPT desktop version 26.803.41515.

If your Mac can no longer launch new processes, fully quit ChatGPT or restart your Mac to clear the existing zombie processes. Then update ChatGPT and reopen it. If the issue continues on version 26.803.41515, contact Support with your app version and macOS version.