While Windows Recall was the centre of quite the cybersecurity controversy, we haven’t heard much of it since Microsoft rolled it out to Insiders last year. Now, another AI chatbot is getting features much like what Recall promised, but from another company. Following the announcement of GPT-5.6, OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will now have the ability to remember what you do across apps and websites on your system. It does look like it’s limited to only Mac systems for now, though.
The feature itself is called Computer History, which is a pretty self-explanatory name. OpenAI says that it “turns your activity across apps and websites into memories and a timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can reference. You can ask natural questions about recent work, pick up where you left off, understand patterns in how you work, and turn repeated workflows into skills or automation”. The company does make sure to say that it doesn’t capture screenshots, screen recordings, mic input, or system audio.
As you’d expect, the feature is turned off by default, and it doesn’t look to be a feature that free and Go users can access. You’ll have to be a ChatGPT Pro, Business or Enterprise user, and also use the desktop app on macOS. And if you are a Business or Enterprise user, the administrator must grant access to each member first before they can turn Computer History on. Then once it’s turned on, users can also choose to exclude specific sites and apps from being recorded by the feature.
Much like Windows Recall, OpenAI says that Computer History files “are not encrypted … and other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them”. So it may not be such a bad thing that regular free users of ChatGPT don’t get access to the feature after all.
(Source: OpenAI [1], [2])
