ChatGPT Computer History Tracks Mac Clicks and Keystrokes
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- OpenAI launched Computer History inside the ChatGPT macOS app, turning users' clicks and keystrokes into a searchable activity timeline that ChatGPT and Codex can reference during requests.
- Computer History is opt-in rather than opt-out, and lets users exclude specific apps and websites and delete individual entries for finer-grained control.
- Ari Weinstein, OpenAI's Product and Engineering manager, said on X that the feature automatically ignores content from incognito or private browser tabs.
- Dominik Kundel of OpenAI's Developer Experiences team demonstrated the feature retrieving his last edited document, checking Slack shares, and generating a recap of his morning activity.
- Unlike Microsoft's Windows Recall, which relied on screenshots, Computer History records only "events" and explicitly does not capture images, video, or audio.
- The feature surfaces automations and can resume tasks the user left half-finished, with OpenAI framing it as a productivity layer built on continuous activity logging.
Why it matters: OpenAI is shipping always-on activity tracking on macOS under an opt-in model, learning from the backlash that greeted Microsoft Recall's screenshot-based approach. Users who opt in trade continuous behavioral data — every click and keystroke across excluded-by-default apps — for resumable workflows and automation suggestions drawn from ChatGPT and Codex.
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