My experience with the Chat GPT app on MacOS

This is really good to know. I was wondering how it would work with voiceover. I've not yet got access but now look forward to it.

Also, just a suggestion, if you change your subject line to include that this is Chat GPT for Mac it makes things slightly easier for everyone to find. :)

Okay okay... It was early, pre coffeee.

thanks
:)

Not finding any apps for ChatGPT in the App Store for MacOS

It's not in the mac appstore, you get it from the open ai/chat gpt site though it is still rolling out. I've not yet got it. I'm not sure if that's because I'm in the UK though. Annoying if so. I'm still paying. :)

hey, even i'm interested to try on my mac, i'm trying to find it on store, but there are many with the same name. could you mind dropping a link of that here?
thanks.

It's not on the mac app store, it's only officially available through the Open AI site. You'll only be able to download if you are a plus subscriber and it has rolled out to you. The roll out is being rather slow. Anything you get on the mac app store is unofficial.

There is a way of downloading elsewhere if you don't yet have it in your account but there isn't any point unless your plus account has been upgraded to use it. Another case of hurry up and wait from Open AI.

Okay, got this working now.

Is there any way to have the output automatically voiced, IE, get voiceover to watch the output field? Moving back and forth is a bit of a pain.

Your judgement?

How do you know when you have access?
I've heard from other sources that it's a popup you get after logging' into the site.
Is this the case and if so, does voiceover read it out?
I am excited to try it out.

I don't subscribe to chat gpt and I can now download the app for the Mac.

Once I stopped trying to use it like Skype and realised that "Collection" was where the chats were and I was just going to have to put my hatred of things that just say "Collection" to one side, and once I re-read the comments above, actually it seems like a big improvement over the web interface. No "button button button" here.

I wanted to use VO's navigate to text box like I do in Skype, but I can get used to Option+Space or just using VO to get to the right place.

My initial attempt to copy the code involved going into Collection then VO+Shift+M then Copy, but this doesn't seem to do anything. VO's copy last utterance works, but the tip above or interacting again and finding copy was better.

So initial impression was "hate it" then read the OP, tried again and actually once you know what to do I reckon it will be pretty damn good. Will try to use this instead of Skype's Co-pilot for a bit and see how I get on.

Hey everyone,

I downloaded the official ChatGPT app for macOS on Wednesday. The accessibility is great, but to be honest I’ve mainly been using voice mode more than text mode. I never got a pop-up telling me to download it, I just went on the Toms guide website, just to randomly check out what was new and then I saw the chatgpt app was officially available, because they were talking about it.

Since this was released in the wild, I've switched from using Skype Co-pilot to this. There are some definite pros and cons of each.

I like having ChatGPT as a standalone app. Pressing Option+Space to start typing is quick and easy to remember. I'm also less likely to ask an AI question in the wrong chat group by mistake.

The collection is a fairly quick and easy way to get to the information. Copying code here is a lot easier than Skype and actually retains its indentation which is pretty important for Python and YAML in particular.

I like having a voice option although not used it much.

However, there are a number of things that I think are better in Skype.

I know when Skype is still replying because it tells me that Co-pilot is typing. I get a plink when it's finished. With ChatGPT I don't really know when it's finished. Sometimes I look at the response and then it starts again because it has presumably updated itself. So I tend to just wait a little bit before looking.

Skype cites its references. This is so useful and I miss it a lot.

The ChatGPT app doesn't seem very good at follow-up questions. A couple of examples - I was asking it about doing something in TypeScript and I asked a follow-up and it suddenly went into Python. (There was nothing about Python in the chat). Or it gave me an answer but it was a terrible way to do it so I asked if there was a more efficient way. It then gave me a blanket answer about how to implement caching in databases and it seemed to have no memory of what I was originally asking. I have no such problem with Skype.

So, generally ChatGPT wins as far as UI goes, but Skype wins as far as actual responses go.

I should say I am on the free tier and have not paid for either. Maybe it is different if you subscribe.

I have to use Skype at work, so when it asked if I wanted to use Co-pilot in it I just said yes. Now I have a chat that just appears in my sidebar and I can just type stuff in there if I want.

Don't laugh, but before this I was using Bing bot (well going to bing.com and using co-pilot in there). I think it's exactly the same but with a different UI. I suspect it's also the same as the Microsoft Co-pilot app on the iPhone.

I wouldn't install Skype specifically for this.

Glad the follow-up thing isn't just me - hopefully it will be fixed.

I'm finding it difficult to get to the output. Is there something I'm missing or is it a case of getting to the collection window, drilling down and then using VO and arrows to get to the bottom of the window and output? Is there no easy way of reading through by line?

It just all feels like another example of voiceover being really akward in such windows.

If there is a way to quickly jump between text box and results then I've not found it. None of the VO navigate options like VO+J, jump to text box, jump to table, windows spots etc seem to work as far as I know.

I typically just use Option+Space to get to the text box, then navigate backwards until I hear Collection, then interact, press down a lot, interact again then use vo+left/right. It's a touch fiddly but it has some advantages over a big long chat output like Skype.

I can't say I love interacting with Collections but as has been said above it does have some advantages. It's a little easier to go back over previous comments and a little easier to copy specific results.

I guess I'd only really been using the last response and just presumed that Collection contained everything but it seems to be just the last question and answer. I did find an option to open a sidebar and in that was a list of all my questions. So I suppose to navigate around you need a combination of both. It's not very nice to navigate although I guess it is accessible.

One other annoying thing is that the Collection seems to lose focus when the app does. So sometimes an answer has a number of code blocks. I might copy the first bit and paste it somewhere, then go back to grab the next bit, but to get to it I have to navigate to the collection and find it all over again.

Also sometimes option+space doesn't then allow me to go back to collection.

Feels like the UI is a near miss at the moment, but at least it is usable, and at least we don't have button button button.

Is anyone else having problems with this at the moment? I think it was working OK last week, but now, the collection only seems to have my question and no answer. I think it's been getting increasingly awkward and fiddly to use recently but now I can't use it at all.

I'll probably just create a Safari web app for the ChatGPT web site but I quite like having a proper separate app, particularly with the handy system-wide shortcut.

It doesn't say collection empty it says "collection 2 items selected." which is what it always did, but if I interact with it I can now only find the question not the answer. This is new for me as of yesterday. Quitting and reopening the app then going to find a previous chat doesn't help.

Damn, I was hoping I was just being stupid.

I'm still using Sonoma so I doubt it's a change in VO behaviour. Not to say it isn't still a VO bug though.

I created a Safari web app from the ChatGPT web site and so far this does seem like it might bebetter anyway.

Firstly, you can quickly jump to the text box with navigate to next/previous text field (which I have set on numpad commander anyway). Not quite as convenient as option+space as it only works if the app has focus, but still what I'm used to using for other things like Skype anyway.

There are still a few unlabelled buttons - but I think these are just about rating the quality of the answer. I used VO+Shift+L to tell me what the far right was - it said a white cross or something, so I used that and now I just see labelled buttons.

The questions and answers seem to be grouped by headings. There is a button to copy the code. If you want the answer spoken aloud then you just press another button.

No doubt if I do some more complex questions I might change my mind but it does seem a bit simpler than the Mac app and doesn't involve faffing about with that collection.

VoiceOver tells you if GPT is still writing an answer and when it has finished. Which always used to annoy me about the Mac app.

And it allows follow-up questions. The Mac has some sort of memory option - I don't think it works like that but I might be wrong and can't test it now.

The app also had one other annoying feature - I think its interface overlaid my main screen. But I would never have any idea it was doing this unless I shared my screen, in which case whoever I was talking to could see my ChatGPT window. There's probably an option somewhere to turn that off but I never found it.

So right now I'm struggling to think of any reasons to use the the Mac app over the web interface.

I've been using the web app for a week now without SNR. Although now I think about it, I haven't had an SNR in Safari either so maybe I've just got lucky.

If you've not tried it already, you could try making it into a Safari app thing (ie share to dock). This is what I've done and it's quite handy, and you can then assign a nice keyboard shortcut to it using keyboard commander or something.

The interface is much more agreeable than the native app in my opinion.

It's possible I've just got lucky with SNR - they do come and go a little so now I've said this it's possible I'll suddenly get a spike of them again. I am also on Sonoma still - think I'll stay there until Christmas.