Codex notifications on Mac

When Codex notifies you

Codex emits a signal at the moment that matters during a long run: when the agent finishes a turn — that is, when it is done processing your submission and waiting on you again. Its built-in terminal notifications can also fire when Codex pauses for an approval. The question is never whether the signal exists, but whether it actually reaches you once you have tabbed away to do something else. The three methods below are just different ways to catch it.

Method 1: the built-in notification

Codex ships with terminal notifications on. But whether one becomes a real macOS banner depends on your terminal. In Ghostty, iTerm2, Kitty, Warp, and WezTerm, Codex posts a desktop notification when a turn finishes. In every other terminal, including Apple Terminal and the VS Code integrated terminal, it falls back to the terminal bell — audible, but no banner. It also fires only while that terminal is unfocused by default.

The setting lives under [tui] in ~/.codex/config.toml. It is on by default; this is how you would set it explicitly, or flip it to false to silence it:

[tui]
notifications = true

You can also scope it to specific moments by passing an array instead of a boolean — for example notifications = ["agent-turn-complete"] for completion only, or add "approval-requested" to include approval pauses.

Method 2: a DIY notify script

For a real notification in any terminal, Codex can run a program every time it finishes a turn. Point the top-level notify key in ~/.codex/config.toml at your script; Codex appends one argument containing a JSON payload that describes the turn:

notify = ["python3", "/Users/you/.codex/notify.py"]

Then a small script turns that payload into a macOS notification. This one uses osascript, which is built into macOS, so there is nothing to install:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import json
import subprocess
import sys

payload = json.loads(sys.argv[1]) if len(sys.argv) > 1 else {}
if payload.get("type") == "agent-turn-complete":
    message = payload.get("last-assistant-message") or "Turn complete"
    subprocess.run([
        "osascript",
        "-e",
        f'display notification {json.dumps(message)} with title "Codex"',
    ])

The payload Codex passes carries the turn type, the input-messages you sent, and the last-assistant-message the agent ended on — so you can drop the agent's final line straight into the banner, as above.

Want a sound too? Add a line that runs afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Glass.aiff. Want a richer, clickable banner? Run brew install terminal-notifier and call terminal-notifier -title "Codex" -message "Turn complete" -sound default instead.

This is genuinely enough if you run one agent in one terminal and just want a ping when it stops. Be honest about the ceiling, though: it fires on every completed turn, and it is still a plain notification. It tells you a turn ended, not which session, and clicking it can at best raise an app, never the exact terminal tab or the right Codex thread. And you own the upkeep, the config, the script, the Script Editor permission, on every Mac you work from.

Method 3: alerts that jump you back

Vibe Island turns your Mac's notch into a live monitor for every Codex session. When a task finishes or Codex needs your input, the notch surfaces it, with a sound if you want one, and one click takes you straight back — to the exact terminal window, tab, or split for a CLI session, or to the matching thread in the Codex desktop app. There is no config file to edit and no permission to grant: it configures itself the first time you launch it.

Vibe Island FileEditWindowHelp

fix auth bug 3

5h11%4h1m | 7d2%6h1m

fix auth bug ClaudeiTerm 27m

You: fix the auth bug in middleware

Writing middleware.ts

backend server

CodexTerminal1h

optimize queries

GeminiGhostty5h

Permission Request

⚠ Edit src/auth/middleware.ts

12const verify = (token) =>

13-  jwt.verify(token);

13+  if (!token) throw new

14+   AuthError('missing');

15+  return jwt.verify(token,

+3 -1

Deny ⌘N Allow ⌘Y

Claude asks

Which deployment target?

⌘1Production ⌘2Staging ⌘3Local only

5h11%4h1m | 7d2%6h1m

fix auth bug ClaudeiTerm 28m

You: fix the auth bug in middleware

Done — click to jump

backend server

CodexTerminal1h

optimize queries

GeminiGhostty5h

✓ Approved

gemini — optimize-queries

Analyzing the slow queries.

Read(schema.prisma)

└── 1.2 KB

Edit(src/db/queries.ts)

└── Updated (+8 -23)

codex — backend-server

Building the REST endpoints.

Write(src/routes/users.ts)

└── New file (47 lines)

Bash(npm test)

└── 3 passed

claude — fix-auth-bug

Let me look at the auth module.

Searching for 6 patterns… (ctrl+o to expand)

Read 2 files (ctrl+o to expand)

 

Found the issue — token validation skips expiry check.

Monitor Approve Ask Jump

Every agent. One glance.

Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Cursor — all in a single view.

Two things the DIY paths cannot do:

Land you on the exact session. A plain notification cannot route you anywhere. Vibe Island opens the precise terminal tab for a CLI session, or the exact thread for a desktop-app session, so you never have to hunt for where Codex was running.

Watch every terminal and agent at once. The same panel covers 13+ terminals and every agent you run, so you are never guessing which window finished, and one setup replaces a per-terminal, per-machine pile of scripts.

Which method should you use

Common questions

One notch for every agent, not just Codex

Notifications are one part of it. Vibe Island watches Codex alongside every other agent you run: Claude Code, ZCode, Gemini CLI, Antigravity CLI, Cursor Agent, Trae, OpenCode, MiMoCode, Factory Droid, Qoder, Qwen, Grok Build, Kimi Code, DeepSeek, Mistral Vibe, Copilot, CodeBuddy, WorkBuddy, Kiro, Hermes, Amp, Pi Agent, Oh My Pi, and Gajae Code. It surfaces completion and status in a single notch, and clicks you back to the exact session every time. See the AI coding session monitor, start with Codex monitoring, or read how it tracks several agents at once.