Remodex for iOS.
Various OpenAI employees and members of the Codex team have been hinting at a native Codex app for iOS lately. While I very much hope that’s in the cards – especially if the project involves connecting to a remote Mac running the full Codex app – I wanted to highlight an indie utility I’ve been using a lot lately to access my Codex setup on my Mac Studio server from my iPhone.
The app is called Remodex, and it was created by Italian indie developer Emanuele Di Pietro. Remodex, as the name suggests, acts as a remote for the Codex CLI installed on a macOS computer, and it lets you operate your existing projects and chats with a UI that is reminiscent of the official Codex app for Mac. Even better, Remodex is not based on some hack-y workaround: it’s entirely powered by OpenAI’s official (and open-source) Codex App Server.
It’s very easy to get started with Remodex. As long as you have the Codex CLI (not the app) installed on a Mac on your network (I use Tailscale), you just need to install a small Remodex server bridge on the Mac, scan a QR code from your iPhone, and you’re in. Remodex takes care of finding all your existing Codex projects (i.e. folders), active conversations, and lets you resume any chat or start a new one with many of the same options you can find in the Codex app. You can use the latest GPT-5.5 model; you can enable Fast mode with speed control; you can upload files and images, and even dictate text, which will be transcribed by Codex running on your Mac. If you use Tailscale, it doesn’t matter whether you’re near your Mac or not: when you open Remodex, it’ll instantly find your Mac on the “local network” and load your existing Codex workspace. Remodex works with your OpenAI subscription previously configured in the Codex CLI because that’s how the Codex App Server works behind the scenes: it lets third-party utilities securely connect to and use Codex since OpenAI, unlike Anthropic, does not prevent third-party tools from doing so.
I’ve had a great time kicking off new tasks and resuming ongoing work from Remodex on iOS, so much so that I’ve put the app in my Dock. Remodex isn’t perfect: sometimes certain responses are loaded out of order, and I found myself having to force-quit the app on a couple of occasions to get it “unstuck” and properly load a conversation again. Those issues weren’t dealbreakers, however: the value I get out of this app is the ability to connect to my local Codex instance, which has access to other tools on my Mac, cron jobs, skills, and other features that are not available in the Codex cloud integration inside the ChatGPT app on iOS. That’s exactly why I’m hoping that OpenAI will “Sherlock” Remodex with an official solution that, in theory, should unlock even more functionalities than Di Pietro’s unofficial client. For now, though, Remodex is the only app I’ve found that lets me do all this with a lovely Liquid Glass design that fully embraces iOS 26 and does not resemble a command-line utility.
Before writing this post, I took the opportunity to chat with Di Pietro about Remodex. “I used the Codex App Server to build the app”, Di Pietro confirmed, adding that “what I love about OpenAI is that they provide tools like this, which we can use to build our own open-source projects”. Indeed, OpenAI’s embrace of the open-source community and third-party integrations built on top of Codex is, at the moment, a major differentiator from Anthropic, whose Claude Code is notoriously closed off. Di Pietro is fully aware of the fact that he may soon have some serious competition in the form of OpenAI itself. “I took on this challenge knowing it was only a matter of time before OpenAI released its own version”, he said. “I managed to get the attention of many people at OpenAI and connect with them more directly, so I guess I still had my wins”, Di Pietro added.
Even if OpenAI does release a native Codex app for iOS, I still think there’s room for creators in the indie development scene like Di Pietro to accept a possible Sherlocking and continue to iterate on their apps with more options for power users, more integrations, and broader platform availability. Remodex, which is free on the App Store with a $3.99/month or $29.99/year subscription to unlock all features, currently does not have an iPad version, doesn’t display the automations, skills, and plugins you have installed in Codex, and doesn’t integrate with other coding agents beyond Codex. Those are all potential features that OpenAI will likely ignore with their debut of Codex for iOS, but which third-party developers can continue offering for advanced users. Di Pietro is also currently working on DP Code, itself a fork of the open-source T3 Code app. “It would be nice to integrate it with Remodex”, Di Pietro said. “That would mean expanding Remodex to include more providers, such as Claude, OpenCode, and Cursor – but I guess that is still up in the air”, he concluded.
I’m biased because the story of an indie Italian developer taking on a project that may soon be Sherlocked by OpenAI is too good for me to pass up, but Remodex is genuinely a fascinating app that works well, has saved me a lot of time I’d have otherwise spent screen-sharing with my Mac, and should serve as an example for OpenAI to take inspiration from.
Until an official Codex app for iOS lands on the App Store, I’ll be working more and more in Remodex, which is playing an essential role in allowing me to use Codex for everything and also enabled me to stop using Claude and OpenClaw as additional agents on my Mac.
Remodex is available for free on the App Store.