How to link ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode to iPhone action button

I have a confession to make: Despite spending most of my career as a tech journalist and always eager to embrace or at least test the latest and greatest personal technology, I’ve never found a voice assistant to help me. it works.

Part of that is because the technology has been pretty clunky so far: Apple pushes boundaries through acquisitions and launches Xili Back in 2011, soon joined Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant Back in 2014, when I was testing and using these two cases, I stopped after a few weeks in both cases because I found myself constantly having to “struggle” with voice interactions – e.g., while speaking Pausing or repeating yourself too often before something goes wrong.

I know I’m not alone, as much has been written over the past decade or so about the shortcomings of these two early voice assistants.

But then OpenAI came along with ChatGPT, and its human-friendly advanced voice mode audio interactions were finally launched – after a long delay from the first target date – Back to September 2024.

Many advanced AI users have commented on the usefulness and helpfulness of OpenAI’s ChatGPT advanced voice mode: being able to search the web for information and have full conversations, analyze and react to images uploaded to it, and even pause and respond when interrupted. Allows human users to quickly redirect or move conversations to other topics – just like a real human conversation.

Recently, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman retweeted X go through Ethan Mollick, AI advanced user and Wharton School professor It is worth noting that newer versions of Apple iPhones can map their new “action buttons” to the ChatGPT advanced voice mode, allowing users to turn on voice with one click.

I’ve been able to use Advanced Voice Mode as one of the pinnable and customizable widgets at the top of the iPhone lock screen, but it requires you to actually look down at the phone and find the icon.

Mapping Advanced Voice Mode to the iPhone’s physical action button (the small button on the left side of the device) appears to be a more accessible option and can be activated with just a touch. I just enabled it and hope it will eventually allow me to use this admittedly amazing technology more often. This is how I do it:

You need a newer iPhone (15 Pro and above)

• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iphone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max

The action button is a new physical button located on the left edge of newer iPhones, above the volume up and down buttons.

When setting up a new iPhone model running iOS 18 or later, the phone’s startup process should give you an option to choose what to do with the action buttons. By default, it is set to “mute” iPhone ringtones and notification sounds.

However, if you’ve set up your iPhone but don’t get this option or use it, don’t worry! You can still adjust later. Here’s how.

Download the official ChatGPT iOS app from the App Store

Available here. While free ChatGPT users can still access it, there is a Change monthly limit The number of times they can call Advanced Voice Mode. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise and Edu paid subscribers (starting at $20 per month) all have higher or unlimited caps on the number of advanced voice mode interactions they can access.

After installing the ChatGPT iOS app on your iPhone, proceed to the next step.

Go to Settings to reassign iPhone action buttons

Click the “Settings” gear icon on the home screen. Then, scroll down to the second section of options and you should find Action Buttons listed in third place, below General and Accessibility. Click on it.

This should open the Action Button assignment app/option on your phone, where you can swipe between different options to learn what will happen when you press the Action Button.

Swipe left to browse the options (swipe right to go back through the options) until you reach the option labeled “Shortcuts” (this is the ninth screen for me).

Click on the up/down arrow selector screen below the “Shortcuts” text and it should open another selection screen, this time showing a variety of shortcuts similar to those in the official Apple iPhone Shortcuts app.

Additionally, if you scroll down below “Getting Started” and any custom shortcuts you’ve previously created in the “My Shortcuts” section, you’ll see a list of icons for third-party applications that also offer shortcuts. This should include the ChatGPT iOS app. Click this.

Finally, this should bring up another selection screen showing a variety of different actions within The ChatGPT iOS application can map to the iPhone’s action buttons. You want to click to select the headset that displays the little headset icon labeled “Start Voice Conversation.”

Clicking this button returns you to the main action button selection screen, the shortcut is highlighted again, and “Start Voice Conversation” is now listed as an action.

After all, you can finally swipe up to close the Settings app and long press the physical action button. It should bring up the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen with a blue circle indicating the voice assistant. Start talking when you see the circle and you’re off to the races!

If you are interested in setting up your iPhone lock screen like me, please also There is a clickable on-screen icon to activate ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, which you can also do easily. Read on to find out how…

Again, you need to download the ChatGPT iOS app (duh). You can then tap to wake the phone and long press for the time shown at the top. This will take you to the lock screen/wallpaper customization screen, as shown below:

Click “Customize” from the two options that appear, then click “Lock screen”:

After clicking Lock Screen, the iPhone should display an editable version of the Lock Screen, represented by the squares surrounding the space for widgets and interactive elements. It looks like this:

Continue clicking on the “Add Gadget” screen, which should show up among a number of different options for different apps, one of which shows the ChatGPT iOS app icon (flower design) with a small headset icon inside. Click this and it should now appear in the top “shelf” of your lock screen, alongside any other widgets you’ve chosen (I chose the weather widget).

That’s it! Happy voice chat and new year.