The current report is a warning, not a diagnosis.
An open Codex Desktop issue reports that one macOS installation accumulated 4.9 GB and 54,504 files in its Crashpad pending directory in one day. The reporter counted 27,252 dump files and the same number of sidecar files. They also observed the count rising while the app remained usable.[1]
Those numbers belong to one user report for app version 26.527.60818. The issue remains open. It does not establish the cause, the number of affected installations, or a product-wide growth rate. Hacker News item 50133231 surfaced the report, but its score and comments add no confirmation.[4]
A growing pending queue proves local accumulation. It does not tell you which process failed or why the queue stayed pending.
Crash reporting has four different jobs.
Crashpad describes itself as a library that captures, stores, and transmits postmortem crash reports. Its handler runs outside the monitored client. The handler snapshots state, writes a dump, and can pass reports to a collection server.[2]
Electron exposes those jobs through separate options. Its documentation says uploadToServer: false still collects reports and stores them locally. It also says rateLimit: true limits uploads to one per hour, while reports over that limit remain on disk. An upload brake is not a disk brake.[3]
Electron also warns that the directory layout is an implementation detail. Do not build a permanent cleanup script around guessed subfolders. Find the documented crash-dump directory for the installed app, then record the exact path and version before touching files.
Inspect with the least pressure first.
When a disk is already tight, avoid parsing every dump or walking a huge directory for curiosity. Check the reported path, record its size, wait, and repeat. The pair below reads size only. It does not delete, upload, or open dump contents.
TARGET="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.openai.codex/web/Crashpad/pending" date; du -sh "$TARGET" sleep 60 date; du -sh "$TARGET"
If the second value grows, stop or quit the confirmed writer through the app's normal control. Recheck the size. Preserve the app version, timestamps, exact path, and a private support route. Dump files can contain process memory, local paths, prompts, and project data.
Keep cleanup behind a separate decision.
- Locate the exact report bucket. Do not treat the whole application-support directory as disposable.
- Measure twice to separate active growth from old residue.
- Stop the confirmed writer and verify that growth stops.
- Keep a recovery handle before moving known reports.
- Ask the product maintainer for a private upload path if one report may help.
- Choose deletion, quarantine, or retention only after ownership is clear.
The fusebox below drafts an inspection sheet. It never grants permission to delete files.