OpenAI adds an Apple Messages plugin letting ChatGPT send texts from a Mac

OpenAI shipped an Apple Messages plugin for the ChatGPT desktop app on Mac on August 20, 2026, letting the assistant read, search and send a user’s iMessage, SMS and RCS texts on their behalf. The feature landed in the company’s ChatGPT for macOS release notes.

The plugin runs locally, using macOS AppleScript and Accessibility interfaces to reach the Messages app rather than routing texts through a cloud service. It ships only in the Apple Silicon build of the desktop app, with no support for Intel Macs, and works only inside Codex and ChatGPT Work chats, not ordinary ChatGPT chats, the web, mobile, the Codex command line or the IDE extension. It is available on all ChatGPT plans.

By default, ChatGPT requires the user to approve each message and its recipients before anything is sent. Users can switch on persistent approval to skip that step, a change OpenAI explicitly cautions against. “Enabling persistent approval removes your final chance to review a message before ChatGPT sends it as you,” the company said in its documentation.

OpenAI’s own materials describe the feature as raising privacy and control questions, an unusually direct admission for a product release. Handing an AI assistant standing permission to send messages that appear to come from the user collapses the gap between drafting and sending, and any error goes out under the user’s name.

The plugin is one of the more consequential steps yet in giving ChatGPT reach over a personal communication channel. Its narrow rollout, limited to Work and Codex chats, suggests OpenAI is testing the boundaries cautiously.