ChatGPT can now read and send your iMessages on Mac

OpenAI released a new Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on August 20, 2026, letting the assistant search, read, summarize, draft, and send texts directly from a chat window. The feature works with ChatGPT Work and Codex on Mac, pulling in iMessage, SMS, and RCS conversations.

The pitch is straightforward: instead of switching between apps to find a thread, ask ChatGPT to pull it up, then have it compose and send a reply without leaving the conversation. That convenience comes with an obvious trust question, since the assistant is now handling personal message content rather than just generating text in isolation.

OpenAI's answer to that concern centers on where the processing happens. The company says the plugin runs locally on the user's machine and does not build an index of all messages, meaning it isn't scanning and storing a full copy of someone's texting history in the background.

Approval stays in the loop

By default, ChatGPT asks for user approval before actually sending anything through the plugin. Users who trust the workflow can switch on persistent approval to skip that per-message confirmation, trading a bit of friction for speed.

The feature is narrowly scoped for now. It requires a Mac running Apple Silicon, and it isn't available in the standard ChatGPT web or mobile apps, nor in the Codex CLI or IDE extensions. Access runs specifically through ChatGPT Work and Codex on desktop.

Codex also gets sync and sharing updates

Alongside the messaging plugin, OpenAI shipped two smaller Codex updates. Pinned conversations now sync between the desktop and iPhone apps when a user is signed into the same account, though that sync does not yet extend to Android.

Codex users can also generate read-only shareable links for their conversations. These links strip out tool calls and command-line inputs and outputs, so anyone viewing a shared session sees the conversation itself without exposure to the underlying commands that were run.

Together, the changes push ChatGPT further into the role of a personal assistant embedded in daily communication tools rather than a standalone chat interface, though for now that reach is limited to Mac users on OpenAI's higher-tier Work and Codex products.