Want to redo an earlier prompt in the Codex desktop app? Day 14 lets you edit previous messages in a thread

#What changed

In his Day 14 post on X on October 18, 2026 (about 6:18 PM PT), Tibo (@thsottiaux, who leads Codex at OpenAI) said you can now edit previous messages within a thread in the desktop app. He called it a long-requested quality-of-life fix that took too long to ship. When someone asked whether an edited prompt acts like a steer on the running turn, he replied that it "registers as time travel", which suggests the thread picks up again from the edited message rather than nudging the current turn.

#Who is affected

Anyone who works in the ChatGPT / Codex desktop app and has ever had an early prompt send a thread in the wrong direction. Tibo only mentioned the desktop app; he did not mention the CLI, the web, mobile, or any plan limits.

#What to do now

• When an early instruction was wrong or vague, edit that message instead of stacking corrections on top of it or starting a fresh thread, so the rest of the thread does not carry the bad instruction.
• Because the edit seems to rewind the thread, commit or stash any file changes Codex already made before you edit an earlier message in a thread that touched your repo, so you can compare or restore them.
• If you do not see the option yet, update the desktop app and check again.

#What is not confirmed

As of the evening of October 18, the official ChatGPT & Codex changelog does not list this yet (its latest Codex app entry is 26.1007 from October 8). We have not tested it, so it is not independently verified what happens to later messages, file changes, or usage when you edit an earlier message, or whether it has reached every account.