How to use OpenAI's ChatGPT app for Mac

OpenAI in May 2024 announced the ChatGPT desktop app for Mac. Since then, the general AI company has rolled out the app to some ChatGPT subscribers and is expected to launch it more widely soon.

You can download the app from OpenAI's servers, and if you're a ChatGPT Plus subscriber but are still waiting for an invite, there's a very simple trick that will give you early access. Here are some reasons why you might want to start using ChatGPT for Mac.

Go to ChatGPT Launcher

Currently, people can use OpenAI's chatbot on iPhone through the official ChatGPT iOS app, but most desktop users rely on accessing the website in a browser. Thanks to ChatGPT for Mac, everything seems a lot more integrated. By using the Option + Space keyboard shortcut, you can instantly call up the app's Launcher and ask the conversational AI to help you with some task or project, and you can also quickly access on some other key features.

The small window that appears on your screen feels similar to when you invoke Spotlight (Command + Space) in macOS: It floats above any windows or apps you have open and provides a convenient feel. Equally. The paperclip button lets you include a file or photo you might want to get help with, and adding an attachment sends it to ChatGPT where you can ask follow-up questions in a dedicated application window.

Screen capture

Clicking the paperclip icon also brings up some useful additional options, such as the ability to take a screenshot of any open application window (even if it's off-screen) or the entire your screen set and query it using ChatGPT. For example, we queried a screenshot of a recent MacRumors article about Apple Music's top 10 albums of all time and asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the top critics' reviews for each album.

On another occasion, we had ChatGPT extract text from a drop-down selection menu on Apple's website and format it with HTML as an unordered list, which was done in just a few seconds . From proofreading an open document to getting help troubleshooting problems, it's easy to imagine all sorts of situations where this feature could help save time and improve productivity.

Currently, it's not possible to directly query ChatGPT about what's visible on your Mac's screen, but OpenAI says this feature will be available in a future update.

Take a photo

"Take a photo" is another option you can access via the paperclip button. Clicking it will automatically display the current output of your Mac's FaceTime camera or attached webcam.

This is useful if you just want to keep an object in front of the Mac you want to query. However, you can also choose to have your ‌iPhone‌ camera nearby, which gives you more freedom to move around and more carefully compose the subject of your photo.

The only problem now is that the shutter button stays on the camera feed on your Mac's screen, instead of moving to the ‌iPhone‌. This is probably an oversight that OpenAI will soon fix.

Customize ChatGPT

In the app's settings (accessed via ChatPGT ➝ Settings… in the menu bar when the app's main window is active) there are several options that allow you to customize how ChatGPT works. You can control whether OpenAI uses your content to train models, as well as change the desktop launcher shortcut and enable/disable GPT capabilities including web browsing, DALL·E image generator and Code Interpreter.

You can also add custom instructions that affect how ChatGPT responds (also known as prompting techniques). So you can make answers more formal or more casual, or specify whether they should be long or short. You can also personalize ChatGPT to cosplay a certain profession or character. If you want it to respond like an academic thesis advisor or Samuel L Jackson, for example, you can specify that in the settings.

The main application window also allows you to access your chat history and switch between any custom GPTs you have set in the sidebar. Not only that, you can choose which version of ChatGPT you want to query. For example, the introduction of the new multimodal GPT-4o model enhances response times, improves inference, and provides better understanding of images and other types of content.

Voice chat

When interacting with ChatGPT in the main window of the application, there are buttons to dictate your query or start a two-way voice chat with the bot. In theory this sounds great but in practice there is a delay between responses and you have to wait for ChatGPT to stop talking before it can issue the next query or command. Other features such as taking photos via voice are also not accessible. Luckily, there's more ahead than this.

At OpenAI's Spring Update, the company introduced ChatGPT's new real-time voice chat feature, including the ability to interrupt chatbots and redirect conversations. As of writing, the ChatGPT Mac app does not support these features, but OpenAI says we will see them added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.

If you are a regular user of ChatGPT on Mac, then using OpenAI's official app will be your best method of interacting with the AI ​​chatbot. For a first release, the client is surprisingly improved, and invoking the Launcher via keyboard shortcuts makes using ChatGPT faster and easier than ever. It also provides a look at a possible future where ChatGPT is fully integrated with Apple's operating system.