The Mac version of ChatGPT can now read information from other applications

The OpenAI company recently announced that the new update for the desktop version of its chatbot for the Mac operating system will be able to read information from other programs. The Mac version of ChatGPT can now automatically recognize code written in other programs such as Xcode.

Copying the codes within the ChatGPT software environment or its web version and asking for their modification or finding problems is one of the very useful uses of this chatbot for developers. Until now, it was not possible to select the desired code without copying it, but the new update for the Mac version will solve this problem. For now, this feature only supports VS Code and Xcode, along with TextEdit and Terminal.

The new feature of the Mac version of ChatGPT can only read data from other programs and cannot write text or data in them; While some popular programming assistants such as Cursor or GitHub Copilot benefit from such a possibility. Although this capability is far from an effective artificial intelligence operator, OpenAI believes that the chatbot’s understanding of information from other applications is an important and fundamental step for its evolution.

The Work with Apps feature, which is now available to Mac users, will probably be equipped with the possibility of writing code and text in other apps in the near future. According to the official announcement, for now only users of Plus and Teams services can use this feature, and the access of organizational and educational users will be established from next week. Of course, it seems that for now there will be no news of providing it for free users.

How can ChatGPT recognize data from other apps?

Reading data from other programs is provided by ChatGPT thanks to Apple’s VoiceOver feature, which is used to convert text to voice to help people with disabilities. This feature has been in the Apple desktop operating system for about 2 decades and has worked well in most applications, but some other software, such as Microsoft’s VS Code, require a separate add-on to fully interact with the chatbot, and the user must install it manually.