Tools 2026-08-21

ChatGPT can now read your iMessages and send them — and the setting that lets it skip asking is the one OpenAI warns about

OpenAI released an Apple Messages plug-in for the ChatGPT desktop app on 20 August. Once connected, the assistant can read and search the iMessage, SMS and RCS conversations stored on that Mac, draft replies based on what came in, send them through the Messages app, delete messages and dig through history for a detail you half remember. It is on every plan and works with Codex and ChatGPT Work, but it ships only in the Apple Silicon build — Intel Macs, the web version and the phone apps get nothing. macOS asks for permission before ChatGPT touches Messages, and by default you see both the text and the recipients before anything is sent. OpenAI told Bloomberg the plug-in runs on the machine itself and does not build an index of everything you have ever written. It also flags the catch in its own feature: granting standing approval so it stops asking each time removes your last chance to read a message before it goes out.

Why it mattersYour message archive is arguably the most sensitive text you own — years of it, about other people who never agreed to any of this. This is the first time a mainstream assistant has been handed both the reading of it and the ability to speak in your name to your contacts, and the safeguard is a single toggle whose whole appeal is turning it off. Worth noting where the pressure lands: the convenience is yours, the exposure is partly shared by everyone who has ever texted you. Anyone enabling this should leave the review step on, and treat persistent approval as a decision rather than a nuisance to dismiss.

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✓ Verified · 3 sources

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2026-08-21

ChatGPT can now read your iMessages and send them — and the setting that lets it skip asking is the one OpenAI warns about

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