OpenAI released a Mac plugin on Thursday that lets ChatGPT read, search and send messages across three formats inside Apple's Messages app.
Key Points:
- OpenAI's Apple Messages plugin can read, search, draft, send and delete iMessage, SMS and RCS conversations on a Mac.
- Installation requires Full Disk Access in macOS System Settings, plus permission to reach contact names and automation tools.
- Apple sued OpenAI in July over alleged trade secret theft, and its unreleased Siri AI is designed to search messages too.
ChatGPT Messages Plugin Reaches iMessage, SMS And RCS
OpenAI rolled out the Apple Messages plugin for its macOS desktop app, and users install it themselves from the public plugin list that sits inside ChatGPT. The tool reaches iMessage, SMS and RCS threads already stored on the machine, then drafts replies, summarizes long exchanges, deletes items or attaches files when asked. Suggested prompts run to household chores.
One example lifts birthdays out of old conversations and drops them into a calendar, while another checks that calendar before answering a dinner invitation. OpenAI offers the plugin on every subscription tier, yet it operates only inside ChatGPT Work and Codex, and never in a standard chat window.
Only Apple silicon Macs can run it. The feature stays out of the web app, the phone apps, the command line version of Codex and the company's own editor extension for developers. Setup demands Full Disk Access in System Settings, one of the broadest permissions macOS hands out, plus access to contact names and automation tools.
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Full Disk Access Raises Apple Privacy Questions
From there the plugin steers the Mac through AppleScript and Accessibility, and OpenAI has not said whether Apple had any hand in building or reviewing the work. That reach carries prompt injection risk, since the assistant reads text other people wrote and could follow instructions buried inside a thread.
Sending prompts a confirmation screen by default. Users can waive that check for a single conversation, and OpenAI discourages the option, because waiving it removes the last look at a message that leaves under someone's own name. Ari Weinstein, a product staff member at the company, said people can still edit any draft before it goes.
Apple And OpenAI Fight Spills Into Messages
Apple has spent years marketing message privacy as a reason to buy its hardware. A representative did not comment, and the launch lands while the two companies argue in federal court.
Apple sued OpenAI on Jul. 10, accusing former employees of taking hardware secrets for the startup's benefit, and OpenAI has since answered that it sees no evidence behind the claim.
The iPhone maker has blocked outside access to Messages before, breaking the Beeper Mini app that carried iMessage to Android phones in 2023. Its own Siri AI, still unreleased, is built to comb through a user's messages and other on-device content, a capability Apple treats as an edge over rival assistants.
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