OpenAI brings Codex coding tools to ChatGPT mobile

OpenAI has integrated its Codex coding tool into the ChatGPT mobile application, enabling users to monitor and manage their development workflows remotely. The company announced the changes on Thursday, making the update, which is currently in preview, available across all subscription plans on both iOS and Android devices. This integration allows developers to maintain visibility over their active development environments directly from their mobile phones, ensuring they can track progress on any device where Codex is currently running.

The new functionality is designed to offer comprehensive control over active sessions rather than simple task delegation. OpenAI stated that the update provides capabilities beyond simply controlling a single task or sending new tasks to a computer. “From your phone, you can work across all of your threads, review outputs, approve commands, change models, or start something new,” the company said, emphasizing that the feature allows users to see their Codex live environments on any device where the tool is running.

This mobile launch is the latest in a series of rapid updates for Codex, which OpenAI launched approximately a year ago. Last month, the company expanded the tool’s capabilities by allowing Codex to run in the background within desktop environments, empowering the tool to take care of various tasks autonomously. Earlier this month, OpenAI followed that update with the introduction of a Chrome extension, which allows the agent to work directly within live browser sessions.

These continuous feature rollouts reflect the intensifying competition between OpenAI and Anthropic over whose agentic coding tool will become the most widely used. An agentic coding tool is software that can autonomously perform coding tasks. In February, Anthropic introduced a similar Remote Control feature for its Claude Code tool, which allows users to remotely monitor the agent’s work from afar. While both platforms remain widely utilized, Anthropic’s Claude Code has experienced a rise in popularity among businesses and tech professionals over the past year.

Why it matters

The integration of Codex into the ChatGPT mobile app allows users to monitor and manage development workflows remotely, reflecting the ongoing competition between OpenAI and Anthropic in the agentic coding tool market.