🤔 The trackpad on my MacBook stopped clicking physically - the click just wasn't registering. I was already thinking about a service center. But first I opened Codex and described the problem.
What happened with Codex:
I wrote in the chat in Russian: "the trackpad won't click physically, the click doesn't register". Codex, through Computer Use mode, looked at the system settings, analyzed possible causes and sent me one specific command for Terminal. Not a list of tips from the internet - an exact line for my situation. I copied it, pasted it into Terminal, hit Enter. Restarted the Mac. The trackpad worked
What's really happening under the hood of macOS:
📌 Not hardware, but settings - the trackpad is controlled through plist files. The sensitivity threshold for a physical click is stored in com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad FirstClickThreshold. When that value gets messed up - the click stops registering even when you press with normal force
📌 The command resets the threshold - defaults write com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad FirstClickThreshold -int 0 sets the minimum activation threshold. Without a follow-up killall -HUP cfprefsd and a reboot it won't get picked up
📌 Apple Silicon is a separate story - on M1/M2/M3/M4 the classic SMC reset like on Intel doesn't work. A software fix through terminal here isn't a backup option - it's the main tool for system diagnostics
Codex pulled it off precisely because it works with more than just code. In Computer Use mode it sees the screen through Screen Recording, checks what's set in the system settings, builds a hypothesis about the cause. Instead of "try reinstalling macOS" - you get a pinpoint answer for your model and system version
What this changes in how you diagnose hardware:
⚡️ Most "physical" failures are software - trackpad, keys, speakers, charging issues - all of that is handled by drivers and firmware you can reach through terminal
⚡️ An AI agent instead of forums - instead of 40 minutes sorting through tips from 2017 you get an exact answer for your configuration in 2 minutes
⚡️ The pattern is spreading - Claude Code, Cursor, Codex are already being used for OS-level diagnostics on Mac and Linux. It's not a hack, it's a standard agent use case
💼 Tool: Codex on macOS, Computer Use mode + Terminal
⭐️ Andrej Karpathy, co-founder OpenAI, ex-Director of AI Tesla:
"The hottest new programming language is English"
🎯 I described the problem in Russian, got one line of code, and the Mac works again. The line between a "physical failure" and a "software" one keeps getting thinner - most of what looks like hardware is actually controlled through settings files. And if an AI agent can make sense of them - you need a service center less often than you think