OpenAI’s ChatGPT is available on the web and as a mobile app, and will be available as part of Apple Intelligence for iOS 18 in the coming months. There’s also an impressive macOS app that just received a major upgrade and wider availability.
The user interface is quite elegant and can be activated via hotkey. However, it has often been criticized that the controls are often lost when many windows or other applications are open.
With a new update, there is now side-by-side access to the powerful chatbot, making it much easier to integrate into your workflow – among other new features including custom GPT mentions and improved security.
ChatGPT Mac gets a major upgrade
OpenAI’s release notes state: “The macOS desktop app now gives you parallel access to ChatGPT with the new companion window. It stays in front of all other windows, so you can be more productive while working with ChatGPT and other apps.”
This means you can see the data displayed by ChatGPT at a glance, rather than having to constantly find the window and place it in front of your others. Its position, keyboard shortcuts and reset time can all be customized in the app’s settings.
Additionally, the app offers an expandable view for tables and charts, making it easier to customize and download charts for other purposes. There are also numerous bug fixes. You can also allow the app to launch on login, which is a nice addition, and you can “@mention” GPTs as well.
Combined with “increased security for local data storage” and “improved performance when streaming chat responses,” this update seems well worth downloading.
Unfortunately, Windows users will have to wait – at the time of writing, there is no native version available yet, so you will have to use the web-based version of ChatGPT for now.
