Hey!
I am actually very surprized why nobody seems to talk about this over here. The openai livestream topic is too big so maybe I missed some comments about that there.
So I have been trying chatgpt for mac since a couple of days and noticed a few things.
First, with very very long thread, I was consistently getting snr with apple's best browser everyone hate here because of the screen reader, for obvious good reason when gpt was generating the answer. This is no longer an issue with the app.
With coding, the app is incredibly well made and respect most of apple macos accessibility thing, as I can just interact in what voiceover labels as code block (or something like that). Then, after level 1 in code block, vo will read everything and vo right places the cursor to the copy button which copy the code. Level 2 in code block and I can read that code with vo arrows as any other texts. Generally the app is quite smooth, the only very annoying bug is that when I am moving too quickly between prompts (mine and chat gpt ones) vo will say x element selected and I just have to slow down a bit and this is generally solved.
Please let me know your experience, for me for a first week launch the accessibility is more than what I was expecting. Looking forward to the screenshot feature and all my privacy gone! 😂 I hope vocr won't get killed :)
By TheBllindGuy07, 22 May, 2024
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
This is really good to know…
This is really good to know. I was wondering how it would work with voiceover. I've not yet got access but now look forward to it.
Also, just a suggestion, if you change your subject line to include that this is Chat GPT for Mac it makes things slightly easier for everyone to find. :)
It's already there
Chat GPT app on MacOS :)
Okay okay... It was early,…
Okay okay... It was early, pre coffeee.
thanks
:)
This is just the best app ever
Okay. Just discovered something completly unexpected but so welcome!
Basically the area where both user and ai prompts are shown is a big collection with each element within it being either user or ai response. Then, if you interact twice in any of the prompts/answer, you have the same text interface where all basic macos text commands work like in volama. Which means, for my big excitement, that although voiceover can't read math content directly, you will still hear the attachment sounds, but with a simple select copy and pasting in textedit for example the law latex content will be displaied. Same thing for code you can just interact at the right of the copy button and read or copy the code as a regular text field.
App?
Not finding any apps for ChatGPT in the App Store for MacOS
It's not in the mac appstore…
It's not in the mac appstore, you get it from the open ai/chat gpt site though it is still rolling out. I've not yet got it. I'm not sure if that's because I'm in the UK though. Annoying if so. I'm still paying. :)
how can I find that?
hey, even i'm interested to try on my mac, i'm trying to find it on store, but there are many with the same name. could you mind dropping a link of that here?
thanks.
It's not on the mac app…
It's not on the mac app store, it's only officially available through the Open AI site. You'll only be able to download if you are a plus subscriber and it has rolled out to you. The roll out is being rather slow. Anything you get on the mac app store is unofficial.
There is a way of downloading elsewhere if you don't yet have it in your account but there isn't any point unless your plus account has been upgraded to use it. Another case of hurry up and wait from Open AI.
Okay, got this working now…
Okay, got this working now.
Is there any way to have the output automatically voiced, IE, get voiceover to watch the output field? Moving back and forth is a bit of a pain.
I don't think so
I just use my judgment and read the output. Honestly this app is much more comfortable than the web interface and at least aI can avoid safari does not respond when in very long threads while it's generating the answer. And how voiceover act with code blocks is just awesome, same thing with latex. Haven't tested tables or other but the bullet lists are fine.
Your judgement?
Your judgement?
How do you know you have access?
How do you know when you have access?
I've heard from other sources that it's a popup you get after logging' into the site.
Is this the case and if so, does voiceover read it out?
I am excited to try it out.
Yes and yes
I had the popup at the begining of last week or so, it was on windows first though and then I open the website on my mac and it offered me to download the app.
Seems to now be available for all
I don't subscribe to chat gpt and I can now download the app for the Mac.
Seems OK
Once I stopped trying to use it like Skype and realised that "Collection" was where the chats were and I was just going to have to put my hatred of things that just say "Collection" to one side, and once I re-read the comments above, actually it seems like a big improvement over the web interface. No "button button button" here.
I wanted to use VO's navigate to text box like I do in Skype, but I can get used to Option+Space or just using VO to get to the right place.
My initial attempt to copy the code involved going into Collection then VO+Shift+M then Copy, but this doesn't seem to do anything. VO's copy last utterance works, but the tip above or interacting again and finding copy was better.
So initial impression was "hate it" then read the OP, tried again and actually once you know what to do I reckon it will be pretty damn good. Will try to use this instead of Skype's Co-pilot for a bit and see how I get on.
Very good interface
compared to the web version. I don't remember exactly for code but it's basically a read only text field with its answer and your previous prompts so the standard macos text commands works, going as far as copying the math embed that VO is unable to read anywhere but on the web into clipboard as laTek code. That's awesome.
My experience
Hey everyone,
I downloaded the official ChatGPT app for macOS on Wednesday. The accessibility is great, but to be honest I’ve mainly been using voice mode more than text mode. I never got a pop-up telling me to download it, I just went on the Toms guide website, just to randomly check out what was new and then I saw the chatgpt app was officially available, because they were talking about it.
Comparing this to Skypebot
Since this was released in the wild, I've switched from using Skype Co-pilot to this. There are some definite pros and cons of each.
I like having ChatGPT as a standalone app. Pressing Option+Space to start typing is quick and easy to remember. I'm also less likely to ask an AI question in the wrong chat group by mistake.
The collection is a fairly quick and easy way to get to the information. Copying code here is a lot easier than Skype and actually retains its indentation which is pretty important for Python and YAML in particular.
I like having a voice option although not used it much.
However, there are a number of things that I think are better in Skype.
I know when Skype is still replying because it tells me that Co-pilot is typing. I get a plink when it's finished. With ChatGPT I don't really know when it's finished. Sometimes I look at the response and then it starts again because it has presumably updated itself. So I tend to just wait a little bit before looking.
Skype cites its references. This is so useful and I miss it a lot.
The ChatGPT app doesn't seem very good at follow-up questions. A couple of examples - I was asking it about doing something in TypeScript and I asked a follow-up and it suddenly went into Python. (There was nothing about Python in the chat). Or it gave me an answer but it was a terrible way to do it so I asked if there was a more efficient way. It then gave me a blanket answer about how to implement caching in databases and it seemed to have no memory of what I was originally asking. I have no such problem with Skype.
So, generally ChatGPT wins as far as UI goes, but Skype wins as far as actual responses go.
I should say I am on the free tier and have not paid for either. Maybe it is different if you subscribe.
@mr grieves
I can confirm that and I am on the plus version, chatgpt is not very good for follow up questions / recontextualizing itself in a long thread. Never heard of this skype thing you mentioned though.
Skype
I have to use Skype at work, so when it asked if I wanted to use Co-pilot in it I just said yes. Now I have a chat that just appears in my sidebar and I can just type stuff in there if I want.
Don't laugh, but before this I was using Bing bot (well going to bing.com and using co-pilot in there). I think it's exactly the same but with a different UI. I suspect it's also the same as the Microsoft Co-pilot app on the iPhone.
I wouldn't install Skype specifically for this.
Glad the follow-up thing isn't just me - hopefully it will be fixed.
I'm finding it difficult to…
I'm finding it difficult to get to the output. Is there something I'm missing or is it a case of getting to the collection window, drilling down and then using VO and arrows to get to the bottom of the window and output? Is there no easy way of reading through by line?
It just all feels like another example of voiceover being really akward in such windows.
Finding output
If there is a way to quickly jump between text box and results then I've not found it. None of the VO navigate options like VO+J, jump to text box, jump to table, windows spots etc seem to work as far as I know.
I typically just use Option+Space to get to the text box, then navigate backwards until I hear Collection, then interact, press down a lot, interact again then use vo+left/right. It's a touch fiddly but it has some advantages over a big long chat output like Skype.
I can't say I love interacting with Collections but as has been said above it does have some advantages. It's a little easier to go back over previous comments and a little easier to copy specific results.
Actually not so sure
I guess I'd only really been using the last response and just presumed that Collection contained everything but it seems to be just the last question and answer. I did find an option to open a sidebar and in that was a list of all my questions. So I suppose to navigate around you need a combination of both. It's not very nice to navigate although I guess it is accessible.
One other annoying thing is that the Collection seems to lose focus when the app does. So sometimes an answer has a number of code blocks. I might copy the first bit and paste it somewhere, then go back to grab the next bit, but to get to it I have to navigate to the collection and find it all over again.
Also sometimes option+space doesn't then allow me to go back to collection.
Feels like the UI is a near miss at the moment, but at least it is usable, and at least we don't have button button button.
You can read by lines. When…
You can read by lines. When you interact in a collection (the thread, response / your prompt), regular macos text commands work, hence my mention about copying original latek format of math expression voiceover doesn't read at all.
Not working with VoiceOver
Is anyone else having problems with this at the moment? I think it was working OK last week, but now, the collection only seems to have my question and no answer. I think it's been getting increasingly awkward and fiddly to use recently but now I can't use it at all.
I'll probably just create a Safari web app for the ChatGPT web site but I quite like having a proper separate app, particularly with the handy system-wide shortcut.
Eah it can say collection…
Eah it can say collection empty but after restarting the app or VO it works well plus the app is very useful for directly copying latex code.
Not happening for me
It doesn't say collection empty it says "collection 2 items selected." which is what it always did, but if I interact with it I can now only find the question not the answer. This is new for me as of yesterday. Quitting and reopening the app then going to find a previous chat doesn't help.
Ignore what I said. It just…
Ignore what I said. It just happened to me now :) completely useless. How much would you bet it's VO's fault :)
Re: VO
Damn, I was hoping I was just being stupid.
I'm still using Sonoma so I doubt it's a change in VO behaviour. Not to say it isn't still a VO bug though.
Okay so for this I'll give…
Okay so for this I'll give the benifit of the doubt to apple. But yes very very very frustrating bug.
Using ChatGPT web site
I created a Safari web app from the ChatGPT web site and so far this does seem like it might bebetter anyway.
Firstly, you can quickly jump to the text box with navigate to next/previous text field (which I have set on numpad commander anyway). Not quite as convenient as option+space as it only works if the app has focus, but still what I'm used to using for other things like Skype anyway.
There are still a few unlabelled buttons - but I think these are just about rating the quality of the answer. I used VO+Shift+L to tell me what the far right was - it said a white cross or something, so I used that and now I just see labelled buttons.
The questions and answers seem to be grouped by headings. There is a button to copy the code. If you want the answer spoken aloud then you just press another button.
No doubt if I do some more complex questions I might change my mind but it does seem a bit simpler than the Mac app and doesn't involve faffing about with that collection.
A couple of other things
VoiceOver tells you if GPT is still writing an answer and when it has finished. Which always used to annoy me about the Mac app.
And it allows follow-up questions. The Mac has some sort of memory option - I don't think it works like that but I might be wrong and can't test it now.
The app also had one other annoying feature - I think its interface overlaid my main screen. But I would never have any idea it was doing this unless I shared my screen, in which case whoever I was talking to could see my ChatGPT window. There's probably an option somewhere to turn that off but I never found it.
So right now I'm struggling to think of any reasons to use the the Mac app over the web interface.
The problem with the web…
The problem with the web version and why I jumped right to the macos app was and still is that whenever a thread is longer than x amount we always have snr when it's generating an answer. Very very very annoying.
Re: web app
I've been using the web app for a week now without SNR. Although now I think about it, I haven't had an SNR in Safari either so maybe I've just got lucky.
If you've not tried it already, you could try making it into a Safari app thing (ie share to dock). This is what I've done and it's quite handy, and you can then assign a nice keyboard shortcut to it using keyboard commander or something.
The interface is much more agreeable than the native app in my opinion.
It's possible I've just got lucky with SNR - they do come and go a little so now I've said this it's possible I'll suddenly get a spike of them again. I am also on Sonoma still - think I'll stay there until Christmas.