I Gave ChatGPT Access to My IMessage Messages and It Was More Useful Than I Expected.
Installing the ChatGPT desktop app provides several additional features not available through the web portal, including the ability to run queries against your local files, emails, and screenshots. Now, with the macOS client, these additional features extend to your iMessages as well: an Apple Messages plugin is now available.
The idea of giving ChatGPT access to your chats is unlikely to appeal to many users—a typical Reddit response is, “Good luck with that spyware”—but we know many users already turn to AI for help composing and interpreting messages. This simply simplifies the process. (By the way, Claude also has a plugin for Apple Messages .)
As OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch , the plugin processes all data on your Mac and does not send information about your chats to cloud servers. These messages will not appear in your ChatGPT web or mobile apps. Furthermore, the ChatGPT desktop app does not create a full index of your text messages.
This feature is available to all ChatGPT users on Mac: To get started, download and install the desktop app for macOS , then open the Plugins tab, find Messages, and click Install next to Apple Messages. You can then use natural language in your queries to invoke the plugin (“send a message…”), use the @Messages mention, or select Messages from the list of plugins in the query window (click the + icon to find it).
Once set up, ChatGPT can do almost anything you can imagine with your messages, starting with the simplest things: for example, it will send messages for you and even compose them if you’re lacking inspiration. You only need to specify the contact’s name, so something like “Text Steve to apologize for not being able to attend his dinner party politely” will do just that.
When I tried this, ChatGPT generated a suitably friendly message with the right mix of thanks, apologies, and wishes for a wonderful evening. When sending messages, you have the option to review the message and approve it before sending—you can approve messages every time or set them to be sent automatically to selected conversations.
Furthermore, the AI is capable of everything related to your message history. You can use suggestions like “Who messaged me most this week?” or “Is there anything I need to clarify in my conversations?” and ChatGPT will check it.
I tried using ChatGPT to search my message history for event and delivery information, and it found the information every time. I also asked it to review text messages from my carrier to see if my phone bill had increased, and it turned out it had: the AI showed the exact increase, the percentage increase, and the corresponding dates.
The conversation can continue based on the information you find, so if you find a chat with an invitation you haven’t responded to, ChatGPT can fix it—and can even compose a suitable response for you to approve with just a few clicks, depending on the context.
I find the ChatGPT plugin most useful for searching and analyzing message history. I don’t want to hand over the task of composing and sending messages to artificial intelligence—it seems impolite, not to mention harmful to my brain —but searching through large swaths of text is something AI is good at, and it could really save me time.
If you’re willing to trust ChatGPT with access to your Apple Messages chat list (and that’s a big “if”), that’s just another database for the AI to explore and analyze. As with many other plugins, such as Claude and Gmail , the question is where you draw the line between privacy and convenience.
And there are certainly risks to consider: I see this as yet another example of people becoming overly reliant on AI and its “thoughts.” If you want ChatGPT to gauge someone’s mood over time based on their chat history, or craft a message that gives you the best chance of rekindling a relationship, or write a text asking for time off from work based on a fake but plausible excuse, ChatGPT will do it. This is where the technology goes beyond useful and immediately enters the realm of discomfort.