You Don’t Need to Wait for Sequoia to Get ChatGPT on Your Mac
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Although Apple plans to integrate ChatGPT into its Apple Intelligence suite of features later this year, fans of OpenAI’s popular chatbot can take advantage of the company’s own integration today, thanks to a new Mac app that’s free for everyone to use.
Of course, you can access ChatGPT on the web, but Open AI has been gradually rolling out a more tightly integrated experience in the form of a macOS ChatGPT app. It began appearing to ChatGPT Plus subscribers last month, but as of today, the company is officially making it available to every Mac user.
The best part for ChatGPT enthusiasts is that this app integrates tightly into the Mac experience. You can let ChatGPT handle requests instead of Siri and add it alongside Apple’s built-in Spotlight search.
In fact, that seems to be how OpenAI intends for its new app to work, considering the default shortcut is OPT+SPACE, which puts it right alongside the default shortcuts for bringing up Spotlight and Siri. When summoned, it also comes up in a Spotlight-like text entry window.
However, there’s more to ChatGPT’s integration than just easily calling it up. You can also quickly take a screenshot of whatever you’re working on and send it to ChatGPT for analysis or upload photos or files, all from the ChatGPT query box.
ChatGPT is also making voice access available in the Mac app, letting you interact with ChatGPT simply by speaking, just like you would make a request to Siri. This hasn’t been updated to the latest GPT-4o model yet, but it’s expected to be in the next few weeks.
ChatGPT for macOS can be downloaded from OpenAI’s website, and although it’s now available without a ChatGPT Plus subscription, you’ll still need to sign up for a free account.
Meanwhile in macOS Sequoia…
Apple will be integrating ChatGPT into the iPhone, iPad, and Mac later this year when it releases macOS Sequoia, iOS 18, and iPadOS 18, but it plans to do that a bit differently than just letting you call up the chatbot on demand.
Instead, Apple is introducing its own Apple Intelligence features that will power everyday AI requests. If you ask Siri to create a photo or summarize some text, that will be done by Apple Intelligence, not ChatGPT. It will also be done mostly on-device, leaving cloud servers out of the equation for all but the most complex queries.
ChatGPT will only get involved when you ask Siri something that requires “world knowledge” — the sort of things you might otherwise manually search out on Google. While there’s no reason to assume Siri won’t be able to answer simple queries independently, more complex requests requiring AI analysis will be handed over to ChatGPT — but only with your permission.
For instance, if you ask Siri how to bake a cake, it will likely be able to give you that answer on its own from a simple web search. If you tell Siri a list of ingredients you have and ask what types of desserts you can make with them, it’s probably going to involve ChatGPT to get the answer.
It’s unclear whether you’ll be able to ask Siri to send a request to ChatGPT specifically, but from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like Siri will make the call based on what you’re requesting. However, in every case, you’ll be told that ChatGPT is being called upon and asked to confirm that it’s okay.
However, perhaps the most crucial difference between Siri’s use of ChatGPT and ChatGPT for Mac is that you won’t need to sign up for a ChatGPT account. When Siri calls up ChatGPT, your requests are entirely private and anonymous unless you’ve specifically chosen to sign into a ChatGPT account, and nothing will be logged or saved. By comparison, ChatGPT for Mac can’t be used without an account, which means any requests you make there are being used to feed OpenAI’s engine.
Still, even in a Sequoia world, ChatGPT for Mac will be handy for those who like to interact with the chatbot without going through Siri. Sadly, Intel Mac users will still be left out in the cold, as ChatGPT for Mac requires an Apple Silicon Mac, all of which will also gain Apple Intelligence later this year.
