ChatGPT's desktop app on macOS has a new feature called Computer History that turns your actions into training data, learning how you work, suggesting automations, and even picking up tasks you left half done. It uses your activity to build a timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can reference when you make a request.
The feature is opt-in, rather than opt-out, and you can exclude certain apps and websites from Computer History, and you can delete entries if you want finer-grained control. Ari Weinstein, Product and Engineering manager at OpenAI, said on X that Computer History will automatically ignore content in incognito or private browser tabs.
Today we're releasing Computer History in ChatGPT.
It lets ChatGPT learn from everything you do on your computer, so it can better understand how you work, finish tasks that you're in the middle of, and suggest skills and automations based on how you use your computer. pic.twitter.com/xnTq7hWH8O
— Ari Weinstein (@AriX) August 13, 2026
In a quick demo video, Dominik Kundel, a member of the Developer Experiences team at OpenAI, shows the app looking up the last document he edited, checking if it was shared with people via Slack, and delivering a recap of how he spent his morning.
The feature is definitely reminiscent of Windows Recall, but where Microsoft’s controversial AI feature relied heavily on screenshots, OpenAI says Computer History doesn’t capture images, videos, or audio, instead relying on “events.”
