Computer Use loses scrolling/input control across macOS apps
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- Dominant language
- Rust
- Stars
- 125k
- Forks
- 19.5k
- PR merge metrics
- PR metrics pending
Description
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.810.41047
What subscription do you have?
Plus
What platform is your computer?
macOS 26.2 (Build 25C56) Apple Silicon
What issue are you seeing?
- Launch the Codex desktop app and enable Computer Use.
- Open any application with scrollable content.
- Confirm that Computer Use can discover the application window and read its UI/accessibility tree.
- Ask Computer Use to scroll down one page.
- Observe that the scroll action fails with
noWindowsAvailable (-10005)or times out. - Remove/reconfigure Computer Use and repeat the test.
- The action may work briefly, then fail again after several interactions.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
| Target | What still works | What fails |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone Mirroring | Window discovery and screen capture | Click/scroll may return noWindowsAvailable (-10005) |
| Google Chrome | Tab discovery (title and URL) | Claiming a tab, screenshots, and scrolling can time out |
| WPS Office | Accessibility tree and native scrollbars are visible | Scrolling an identified scrollbar returns noWindowsAvailable (-10005) |
The WPS Office reproduction is significant because it is a regular native macOS application, which suggests that this is not specific to iPhone Mirroring or a particular web page.
What is the expected behavior?
Once Computer Use has successfully discovered a target window, it should send scroll events to that window. If the underlying window reference becomes stale, the control layer should rediscover and rebind to the active window automatically.
Actual behavior
The read path and input path become inconsistent:
- Window discovery, screenshots, and accessibility-tree reads continue to work.
- Scroll/click actions fail with
noWindowsAvailable (-10005)or time out. - The issue affects multiple unrelated applications, not just one page or app.
Additional information
No response
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the Computer Use flow on macOS 26.2 with WPS Office, Google Chrome, or iPhone Mirroring, comparing window discovery and accessibility reads with scroll and click actions. Trace the control path that reports noWindowsAvailable (-10005) or times out after the target has been discovered. Done means input remains reliable across repeated interactions, or the active window is rediscovered and rebound when its reference becomes stale.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- macos, rust
- Domain
- desktop, operating-systems
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 55/100