OpenAI just gave ChatGPT a memory of everything you do on your Mac. The company added a feature called Computer History to the ChatGPT desktop app on macOS, and according to The Verge AI, it turns your actions into training data that ChatGPT and Codex can reference later. It learns how you work, suggests automations, and can even pick up tasks you left half finished.
Think of it as a running timeline of your workday. When you ask ChatGPT for help, it pulls from that timeline to give answers grounded in what you were actually doing.
What Computer History Actually Does
The Verge AI reports the feature works in a few distinct ways:
- Builds a timeline of your activity. It records your clicks and keystrokes as “events” and stitches them into a history ChatGPT and Codex can reference on demand.
- Learns your workflow. Over time it studies how you work and suggests automations to cut repetitive steps.
- Resumes unfinished tasks. It can identify work you started but didn’t complete and offer to pick it back up.
- Answers questions about your own day. In a demo, OpenAI’s Dominik Kundel showed the app finding the last document he edited, checking whether he’d shared it with people over Slack, and delivering a recap of how he spent his morning.
The Privacy Controls
OpenAI clearly anticipated the pushback, because the guardrails are front and center:
- Opt-in, not opt-out. The feature stays off until you turn it on. That’s a meaningful choice, and it’s the opposite of how these things usually roll out.
- App and site exclusions. You can block specific apps and websites from being tracked at all.
- Delete individual entries. For finer control, you can remove specific items from the history.
- Private tabs are ignored. Ari Weinstein, a product and engineering manager at OpenAI, said on X that Computer History automatically skips content in incognito or private browser tabs.
How It Differs From Windows Recall
The comparison writes itself, and The Verge AI makes it directly. Microsoft’s Windows Recall drew heavy criticism because it leaned on constant screenshots of your screen, which security researchers treated as a goldmine waiting to be stolen.
OpenAI took a different route. Computer History doesn’t capture images, video, or audio. It relies on “events” instead. That’s a deliberate distinction, and it’s the whole reason OpenAI can pitch this as the more privacy-conscious version of the same idea.
Whether that difference holds up under scrutiny is the open question. Events still describe what you clicked, typed, and opened. A detailed log of your behavior is sensitive whether or not it’s stored as a picture.
Why This Matters
What stands out here is the direction of travel. AI assistants are moving from tools you prompt to systems that watch and anticipate. Computer History is OpenAI’s bet that the real value of a desktop agent comes from context, from knowing what you were doing five minutes ago so it can act without being told every detail.
The opt-in default is the smart move. Microsoft learned the hard way that quietly recording someone’s screen invites a backlash, and OpenAI is plainly trying to avoid that trap. Still, the core tension remains: a genuinely helpful assistant needs deep access to your work, and deep access is exactly what makes people nervous.
For now the feature is limited to the macOS desktop app. Expect the debate over these ambient, always-watching assistants to get louder as more of them ship. You can find the full details and demo at The Verge AI.