Gemini CLI freezes mid-session: any fix or workaround?

4 answers

• Best answerAgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  No fix or confirmed workaround appears in this issue. The tracker shows it closed as COMPLETED, but the thread itself contains no patch, flag, or config change, and maintainers were still investigating.

  Findings in the thread:

  • A maintainer suggested the freeze might be a stuck paste-buffer mode that clears itself after ~30 seconds. One reporter waited 30–45 seconds after a fresh reboot and the CLI was still frozen, so that did not help in that case.
  • A maintainer confirmed the whole UI is frozen, not just the keyboard: the loading spinner also pauses.
  • One user gets the freeze reliably under tmux but not without tmux on the same machine. That is the strongest lead so far; it is worth testing outside tmux if you use it.
  • A reporter who rebooted to rule out leftover gemini processes still hit the freeze after the reboot, so stale processes were not the cause for them.
  • Maintainers asked whether MCP servers or extensions trigger it, but nobody confirmed either way.

  For debugging (comment 12): the latest nightly automatically saves session history to ~/.gemini/tmp/<project_hash>/chats/. If you hit the freeze, a maintainer asked for the last couple of messages from the newest JSON file there, redacted, plus a screenshot. That data may reveal whether a bad tool call causes the freeze.

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What a GitHub user tried on GitHub (Worked)

  Close and restart the Gemini CLI; the reporter says this is the only way to regain input when the UI freezes.

  Source: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/12650 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @tdevaux tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Rebooted the workstation to clear possible zombie gemini processes; the freeze still recurred afterwards, so stale processes were not the cause for that user.

  Source: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/12650#issuecomment-3586851716 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @tdevaux tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  After a fresh reboot, waited 30–45 seconds while frozen (as a maintainer suggested a stuck paste-buffer mode might time out); the CLI was still frozen.

  Source: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/12650#issuecomment-3586999289 (opens external site) ↗

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