OpenAI shipped a meaningful expansion to its Codex product on June 27, 2026: Codex Remote is now generally available on all ChatGPT plans. Previously limited to a closed preview, the feature lets any subscriber use the ChatGPT mobile app to connect to a Mac or Windows machine, kick off or resume coding tasks, and approve actions from their phone.
The experience is built around OpenAI's agentic Codex model, which can read files, run code, write tests, and navigate terminals — the same capabilities available in the desktop app. The difference is that you no longer need to be sitting at your computer. You can start a task on your lunch break or approve a pull request from the couch, with the heavy lifting happening on your development machine back at the desk.
How the pairing works
Remote Control uses authenticated QR pairing between your iOS or Android device and your Mac or Windows host. Each pair is one-to-one — a phone connects to a specific machine, not a shared endpoint. Connections set up since June 8, 2026 carry over automatically; older inactive connections need to pair again.
OpenAI also added a DigitalOcean Droplet plugin at launch. If you'd rather not run Codex against your local machine, you can provision a fresh cloud server, configure SSH access, and connect it to the Codex app as a remote workspace — all from inside ChatGPT.
Why this matters
For developers who already use Codex for longer-running tasks — full feature implementation, test suite generation, codebase refactors — Codex Remote removes a key friction point. Instead of staying anchored to a desk to monitor progress, you can check in from anywhere and approve the next step without losing momentum.
The ChatGPT Business plan also got a simplified model picker alongside this release, making it easier to switch between speed-optimized and reasoning-heavy models. Separately, GPT-4.5 retired from ChatGPT on June 26, completing a migration that began with the May 28 sunset notice — existing conversations automatically moved to the corresponding GPT-5.5 model.
Codex Remote is available today for all ChatGPT plan tiers on both Mac and Windows. Full documentation and the DigitalOcean plugin setup are in the OpenAI Codex developer docs.