People were acting like the Codex beta was some secret handshake link. It is not.
The Mac app publishes a public update feed, and that feed is the source of truth for the latest desktop beta. If you want the newest build, or you want to check whether a direct ZIP is stale, that is where you look.
If you want the short version first, I posted it on X on March 22, 2026:
If you’re looking for the Codex beta, it’s public
Part of the reason interest in the beta spiked is simple: people started showing that the Codex desktop app could use remote connections to work across other machines and services. That made the desktop beta a lot more compelling, and it also made it more obvious that people needed a clean way to find the current build.
As of March 22, 2026, the latest public beta entry in that feed is:
- Version:
26.320.11513 - Internal build:
1119 - Published:
Fri, 20 Mar 2026 23:58:21 +0000 - Minimum macOS:
12.0 - Direct download: Codex (Beta)-darwin-arm64-26.320.11513.zip
- Discovery feed: appcast.xml
If that version has changed by the time you read this, the method is still the same: check the feed, use the first item, and ignore stale screenshots and recycled ZIP URLs.
Use the Feed, Not GitHub Releases
The file you actually want lives in the public beta appcast:
https://persistent.oaistatic.com/codex-app-beta/appcast.xml
That is the canonical place to find the current Mac beta ZIP.
It is not the same thing as the openai/codex GitHub releases page. GitHub currently shows versions like 0.117.0-alpha.8, which are part of the repository and CLI release stream, not the macOS desktop beta app.
If you are asking any of these:
- What is the latest Codex desktop beta?
- Where is the real download link?
- Why are the GitHub version numbers different?
The answer is the same: the desktop beta is tracked in the appcast, not on the GitHub releases page.
What darwin-arm64 Means
The current public beta ZIP is named:
Codex (Beta)-darwin-arm64-26.320.11513.zip
darwin-arm64 means the build is for macOS on Apple Silicon. In practice, that means M1, M2, M3, and M4 Macs.
The current feed also says the minimum supported macOS version is 12.0.
How to Check the Latest Version Yourself
Open the feed and look at the first <item>. That top entry is the newest public beta.
The fields that matter are:
titleorsparkle:shortVersionStringfor the public versionsparkle:versionfor the internal build numbersparkle:minimumSystemVersionfor the minimum macOS versionenclosure urlfor the direct ZIP download
That is enough to answer almost every “is this the current one?” question.
How to Install the Codex Beta on macOS
- Download the latest ZIP from the feed.
- Wait for the archive to finish downloading.
- Open the ZIP and extract
Codex (Beta).app. - Drag the app into
/Applications. - Open it from Applications.
- If macOS warns that the app was downloaded from the internet, review the prompt and continue only if you trust the source.
That is the whole process.
One Terminal Command to Grab the Current Direct ZIP
If you just want the latest direct download URL from Terminal:
curl -fsSL https://persistent.oaistatic.com/codex-app-beta/appcast.xml | grep -m1 -o 'https://[^"]*\.zip'That pulls the first ZIP URL out of the live feed.
How to Tell If a Shared ZIP Is Outdated
An older URL that has been floating around is:
Codex (Beta)-darwin-arm64-26.311.30926.zip
That file exists, but it is older than the latest public feed entry as of March 22, 2026.
If someone gives you a raw direct link, compare the version in that filename to the first item in appcast.xml. That is the fast way to tell whether you are looking at the current build or yesterday’s link.
The Better Link to Share
If you are posting this for other people, share the feed first:
https://persistent.oaistatic.com/codex-app-beta/appcast.xml
You can put the current direct ZIP in the same post for convenience, but the feed is the durable link. Individual ZIPs age out. The feed tells you what is current.
Linux Note
This post is about the macOS beta app, but if you are trying to run Codex desktop on Linux, I also published an unofficial wrapper with stable and beta channel support: