Macs will soon get a dedicated ChatGPT app before Windows users

In the artificial intelligence space, all eyes have been on the recently announced GPT-4o ‘Omni’, OpenAI’s latest flagship multimodal Large Language Model (LLM). However, lesser known is also the fact that the company has announced that it’s working on a dedicated ChatGPT app for macOS as well.

ChatGPT macOS app: What you need to know

OpenAI has revealed that it is working on a dedicated desktop app for macOS. The application, which can be downloaded free of charge, will offer a system-level integration with macOS, and can function across several apps and services.

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A demo video from OpenAI shows that users can open the app in a window beside another program, and ask ChatGPT questions about whatever is on their screen- both via text or speech inputs.

Additionally, they can also ask ChatGPT questions by using an “Option + Spacebar” shortcut to activate it, and even take and discuss screenshots from any given app.

Now OpenAI did mention it is working on a desktop app for Windows as well, which will launch later this year. It isn’t known whether it will offer the same deep-level integration with the operating system as Copilot does, but it could certainly give the latter a run for its money.

Who can access the ChatGPT app on macOS?

Bear in mind that the ChatGPT app, for macOS, is currently being rolled out only to ChatGPT Plus users for the time being. However, it will be made available to users of the free version of the app in the coming weeks as well. While the app is still not listed on the Apple App Store for macOS yet, it should show up soon.

GPT-4o “Omni”: What you need to know

In addition to text and speech, GPT-4o also gets voice and image processing capabilities, collectively referred to as “Vision” by the company. This means ChatGPT can do everything from identifying the brand of shoes your favourite movie character is wearing to analysing code written on the screen and identifying bugs in it. It can even look at restaurant menus and translate them in as many as 50 languages.

ALSO READ: Apple iPhones may soon get system-wide ChatGPT integration; what it means for you

What’s cool is even free-tier users of ChatGPT will have access to the GPT-4o model, albeit with a lower limit on the number of prompts. Once this is exhausted, ChatGPT will automatically switch to the GPT 3.5 LLM.