Notes

How to turn off Codex terminal animations

Almir Sarajčić · 11 September 2026

Codex’s terminal interface enables animations by default. To disable the welcome animation, shimmer effects, and animated spinners, add this to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[tui]
animations = false

Then start a new Codex terminal session normally:

codex

You can also try the setting without changing your configuration:

codex -c 'tui.animations=false'

That command overrides the same setting in your global configuration for that run. Codex has a separate tui.whimsy setting for decorative effects such as the Astra composer stars. If you have disabled both settings globally and want to compare the complete default visual treatment, override both:

codex -c 'tui.animations=true' -c 'tui.whimsy=true'

The difference

With terminal animations enabled:

With terminal animations disabled:

Does it start faster?

I initially thought disabling the animations also made Codex start faster. In a small warmed-up comparison, the median startup times were effectively identical: 561.3 milliseconds with animations and 561.2 milliseconds without them.

The setting makes Codex feel calmer and more immediate. In this small test, it did not make startup meaningfully faster.

OpenAI’s Codex configuration reference and advanced configuration guide