For a while now, the ChatGPT Mac app has been the polite, stripped-back cousin of the web version: fine for a quick question, not somewhere you did real work. That changed today. OpenAI used its second livestream of the week to fold Codex directly into the ChatGPT desktop app, launch a new agent called ChatGPT Work, and start rolling out its GPT-5.6 models. If you run ChatGPT on a Mac, this is the biggest update the app has had since it launched.

The Apple angle is simple. OpenAI is now treating the Mac as a first-class home for serious AI work, at the exact moment Apple's own efforts are still finding their feet.

What's new in the ChatGPT Mac app

The headline for Mac users is consolidation. OpenAI is merging its separate Codex app into the main ChatGPT desktop app, so a single window now covers three modes: Chat, Work and Codex. It is one fewer app to manage and one subscription surface instead of two.

Existing Codex users keep their projects, settings and workflows after updating. On macOS you can also make Codex the default view and keep the old Codex app icon in your Dock, which matters more than it sounds if you have muscle memory built around launching it.

A few of the Codex-side changes stand out:

In-app editing. You can edit Markdown and code directly in the app, drop in inline annotations, and ask Codex to revise a selected chunk rather than rewriting the whole file.
Pull requests in the sidebar. GitHub PR reviews now sit next to the diff, so you can read reviewer feedback without leaving the window.
Multi-repo projects. A single project can now span more than one repository.

Computer use is faster now that it runs on GPT-5.6, and plugin management has moved into Settings. None of this is Apple's doing, but it all lands on the Mac alongside Windows first, which tells you where OpenAI thinks its power users actually sit.

GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna, explained

OpenAI also shipped GPT-5.6 today, and the naming needs a quick translation because it is new. From this generation on, the number tells you the generation and the name tells you the tier. There are three:

Sol is the flagship, pointed at the hardest coding, knowledge-work and science tasks.
Terra is the balanced middle option for everyday work.
Luna is the fast, cheaper model for lighter jobs.

The point of splitting them out is that each tier can improve on its own schedule, so a future bump to Luna does not have to wait for a whole new generation.

There is also a new setting worth knowing about, called “ultra”. Rather than running one model harder, it coordinates several agents across parallel workstreams to get big tasks done faster. The other claim OpenAI is pushing is design taste: it says GPT-5.6 can now inspect the interface it has built, not just the code behind it, and fix visual problems before handing the result back. If that holds up in practice, it is the more interesting half of this release for anyone who builds things.

On price, the API side lands like this per million tokens: Sol at $5 in and $30 out, Terra at $2.50 in and $15 out, Luna at $1 in and $6 out. The models roll out over roughly 24 hours, GPT-5.4 retires on 23 July, and the existing GPT-5.5 models stay available.

ChatGPT Work and hosted sites

Beyond the Mac app, two other things launched. ChatGPT Work is a new agent that runs on the web, mobile and desktop, and it is the piece meant to tie the Chat and Codex worlds together for ordinary day-to-day tasks.

Hosted sites is the second one: OpenAI is letting all paid users publish sites directly from ChatGPT, nudging it into territory you would normally open a separate tool to handle. Neither feature is Mac-exclusive, but both feed into the same desktop app, so on a Mac you get them in one place rather than three.

Why this matters if you're on Apple's side of the fence

Here is the part I keep coming back to. OpenAI is shipping fast and shipping on the Mac, while Apple is still asking us to wait. I have argued before that Apple's AI plan looks like a marathon rather than a sprint, and days like today are exactly when that framing gets tested. A polished app that does real work on your Mac right now is a much harder thing to walk away from than a roadmap and a “coming later this year”.

There is a subtler point about lock-in, too. Once your projects, repos and workflows live inside the ChatGPT Mac app, that is far stickier than a folder of chat history. Apple's traditional advantage is that it owns the operating system, but that counts for less when the best-fitting app on the Mac is coming from someone else.

The timing is a little awkward for Apple as well. The lead on its Siri revamp left the company for OpenAI earlier this year, and the distance between what OpenAI is now putting on the Mac and what Apple actually showed for Siri at WWDC 2026 has not narrowed since. This is not a one-off cadence either. OpenAI refreshed ChatGPT's voice mode only yesterday, CarPlay included, so within a single week it has improved how ChatGPT behaves in your car and on your desktop. That is two Apple touchpoints in two days, from a company that does not make a single piece of Apple hardware.

None of this means you should tear up your setup. But if you have been holding out for Apple to catch up before leaning on AI day to day, the ChatGPT Mac app just made that wait more expensive.

If you take one thing from today, it is that the ChatGPT Mac app is no longer a lightweight front end. With Codex, Work and GPT-5.6 in a single window, it is a proper workspace now, and it is worth reopening even if you wrote it off months ago. I will report back once I have run GPT-5.6 Sol through some real tasks on my own Mac.

FAQ

Is the new ChatGPT Mac app free?

The app is free to download, and the update is free for existing users. What you can do inside it depends on your plan: free and Go accounts get GPT-5.6 Terra, while Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise plans get Sol and the higher effort settings.

Do I still need the separate Codex app?

No. Codex is now built into the ChatGPT desktop app on macOS and Windows. Existing Codex users can update as normal and keep their projects, and on Mac you can still set Codex as the default view and keep its icon.

What happens to the older GPT models?

GPT-5.4 is being retired on 23 July following the GPT-5.6 launch. The GPT-5.5 models remain available.