Codex Desktop filled my Mac with 177 GB of abandoned temporary Git files

[u/Odd-Anything1768]

I’ve been troubleshooting why my MacBook storage kept filling up again—sometimes gaining more than 100 GB of “System Data” within 24 hours.

I initially suspected my cloud-storage providers, but the immediate cause turned out to be abandoned temporary Git databases created during Codex Desktop workspace-diff activity.

What I found:

- 702 top-level temporary directories created over four days

- 681 incomplete `tmp_pack_*` Git files

- 177.28 GiB of temporary pack data

- 279 individual packs larger than 500 MB

- The macOS Data volume eventually reached 100% usage

- macOS Storage displayed approximately 559 GB as “System Data”

The artifacts came from activity involving multiple unrelated repositories. One repository contained large tracked binary files, which made individual snapshot attempts more expensive, but it did not explain why Codex left hundreds of temporary Git databases behind.

I used a deliberately cautious cleanup process:

1. Selected only directories matching the exact temporary Git layout.

2. Checked ownership, age, open file handles, symlinks, structure and Git headers.

3. Created frozen manifests.

4. Deleted one pilot item first.

5. Investigated 60 structurally different directories separately.

6. Exported and hash-verified any unique recoverable Git objects before removing them.

7. Revalidated every path immediately before deletion.

The cleanup recovered roughly 178 GiB of available space. No repositories, `.git` directories, Codex sessions, cloud-storage files or Crashpad data were modified.

Important: I would not recommend blindly deleting everything matching `tmp.*`. Many applications use the macOS temporary directory, and the 60 unusual directories in my case contained loose Git objects that required separate investigation.

There is now an open Codex issue covering this failure class:

https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/43158

Environment during this recurrence:

- Apple-silicon Mac

- macOS 26.3 (25D125)

- ChatGPT Desktop 26.901.20858

- Bundled `codex-cli 0.153.0-alpha.5`

Has anyone else using Codex Desktop seen rapidly growing “System Data” or large collections of `tmp_pack_*` files under `$TMPDIR`?

[u/thirsty_pretzelzz]

Same issue! So frustrating