If you rely heavily on ChatGPT’s Voice feature on the Mac app, be warned: the feature is going away early next year. Here are the details.
Likely temporary decision
In a recent update to ChatGPT’s Mac app, OpenAI included the following message in the release notes:
Voice on macOS desktop app is retiring (effective January 15, 2026) We’re retiring the Voice experience in the ChatGPT macOS app on January 15, 2026. This change allows us to focus on more unified and improved voice experiences across our apps.
Voice will continue to be available on chatgpt.com, iOS, Android, and Windows app.
No other ChatGPT features on macOS are affected.
While this is bad news for users who currently rely heavily on the app’s Voice mode, this will likely turn out to be a temporary inconvenience.
Voice interfaces are becoming increasingly central to how users interact with AI, so it’s unlikely that OpenAI will abandon the feature entirely (particularly considering that voice will likely be the primary way to interact with the company’s upcoming hardware line).
Instead, given the statement that it is focusing “on more unified and improved voice experiences across our apps,” it is very likely that the company is rebuilding this architecture, and that the current implementation of ChatGPT’s Voice feature on the Mac is incompatible with whatever the new approach may be.
Either way, be warned that for now, ChatGPT’s Voice mode will only work until January 15. After that, you’ll need to use its web or iOS/iPadOS version if you still want to talk out loud with ChatGPT.
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