Allow renaming task/thread titles to improve history navigation

[dirshaye]

What version of the IDE extension are you using?

0.4.76

What subscription do you have?

Chatgpt plus

Which IDE are you using?

VS code

What platform is your computer?

Linux 6.17.9-76061709-generic x86_64 x86_64

What issue are you seeing?

What is the problem?

In the Codex VS Code extension, task/thread titles stay auto-generated and I can’t edit them.

When I switch between many tasks, it becomes hard to find an older one because I can’t rename titles to something meaningful for my workflow.

Current behavior

• Title is auto-generated
• No option to edit/rename the title in the extension task/thread history
• I have to open multiple tasks/tabs to figure out which one is the one I need

Expected behavior

• Add a Rename action for tasks/threads in the VS Code extension (context menu and/or inline edit)
• Keep auto-generated titles by default, but allow manual override
• Persist custom titles across restarts/sync
• (Optional) add search/filter support that uses renamed titles

Why this matters

Custom naming makes task history much easier to scan and reduces context-switch friction, especially when working on multiple parallel tasks.

Reference UX

ChatGPT web supports editing auto-generated conversation titles. A similar capability in the VS Code extension would solve this issue.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

1. Open VS Code with the Codex extension installed.
2. Start multiple tasks/chats so the sidebar/history contains several auto-generated titles.
3. Try to rename one of those task/chat titles from the Codex sidebar/history (context menu/title area/actions).
4. Observe there is no working way to edit the title (it remains auto-generated).
5. Try to return to an older task; it is difficult to identify quickly because custom titles are not possible.

What is the expected behavior?

No response

Additional information

Task/chat titles should be editable in the Codex VS Code extension.

Expected:

• A Rename action is available for each task/chat.
• I can replace the auto-generated title with my own title.
• The custom title is saved and shown in history so old tasks are easy to find.

[github-actions]

Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.

• Codex extension - chat list - context menu - need rename option #12552

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[nguyenbs]

Pls make this happen

[anowardear062-svg]

Thanks

[shawnlee-info]

Hey OpenAI, great you tagged this as "enhancement" not "missing essential". At this point I'm not even that expecting this feature, I'm only curious how do you creators use this extension daily on multi tasks? How do you tell which is which from those hilarious auto summarized titles? Or do you even use it daily?

[etraut-openai]

@shawnlee-info, most of the internal OpenAI usage of Codex has switched from the IDE extension to the Codex app. We also still have a large fraction of users who prefer the CLI. The app's UI was designed to handle multiple concurrent tasks and provides features like worktree management, PR creation, review mode, thread pinning, and thread renaming. The IDE extension is more limited. Some of those limitations come from the host (VS Code or Cursor) and others come from the smaller screen real estate afforded by the side panel. I personally still use the IDE extension for some tasks where it's useful to select code in an editor, but I'm now doing most of my work in the app.

I think this is a good feature request, and I'd like to see this added at some point. It's just currently prioritized below many other feature requests when measured by upvotes.

[shawnlee-info]

thanks, I just noticed the Codex App is now available for Windows a few days ago , that's a great job👏. Please understand our frustration before as the IDE extension is the only official way for developers on Windows.

Hope the extension still gets updated at some point though.

When asking this issue on OpenAI forum recently, "OpenAI Support" used Copilot Chat UI screenshot to answer me yes😅

[mahezsh]

I’d be happy to contribute this if extension PRs are open to community contributions. Is there a public repo/path for that @etraut-openai? 🙂