OpenAI has released a plugin that lets ChatGPT work directly with the Apple Messages app on a Mac. With the Apple Messages plugin, ChatGPT can search a user's iMessage, SMS and RCS messages, analyze and summarize conversations, draft replies and send messages.

The feature moves ChatGPT from a tool that suggests message text to a component that acts inside the Messages app. Example uses include checking a calendar and sending someone suitable meeting times, pulling follow-up items out of earlier conversations, and finding birthdays mentioned in messages and adding them to a calendar. The plugin can also be used to flag likely spam.

Sending asks for approval

The plugin installs from the public section of ChatGPT's plugins interface. User approval for sending messages is enabled by default. OpenAI additionally recommends that users not grant ChatGPT persistent permission to send — that is, that they approve each send individually.

The permission list is not short

For the integration to work, ChatGPT must be granted the following through macOS System Settings:

  • Full disk access — the ability to reach every file on the drive.
  • Access to contact names — so people in messages can be identified.
  • Access to automation tools — so it can drive other applications.

According to MacRumors, the system interacts with the Messages app using AppleScript and the accessibility features of macOS. In other words this is not a connection built on an official Apple interface, but one routed through the operating system's general automation layer. Whether Apple was involved in developing the plugin is not known.

A narrow rollout

The feature is available to ChatGPT users with Apple Silicon Macs. The Messages integration runs through ChatGPT Work and Codex in the desktop app; it is not yet available in standard ChatGPT conversations. That constraint suggests the feature is being aimed at enterprise and developer users rather than a broad consumer audience.

The privacy question

The most contested aspect of the integration is privacy. Bloomberg notes that Apple has long positioned the confidentiality of user messages as one of the company's core values. ChatGPT reaching into private conversations inside Messages, and the possibility of that content being sent to OpenAI for processing, sits in direct tension with Apple's stated approach to messaging.

Full disk access is the critical detail here. That permission covers not only the message database but everything on the user's drive. A plugin needing access to the entire system in order to perform one specific function shows that the operating system's permission model was not designed for AI components of this kind. For the user, the decision is between the convenience of a single feature and access granted to the whole disk.