CUPERTINO, Sept. 1 — OpenAI has quietly rolled out a fresh update to its ChatGPT app for iPhone that puts a new, customizable widget called “ChatGPT shortcuts” on the Home Screen. The widget, available in small and medium sizes, lets people long-press, tap “Edit Widget,” and hand-pick which buttons appear — and whether labels sit underneath them — across the full sweep of ChatGPT surfaces: Chat, Work, and Codex Remote.
For families and everyday users, the appeal is straightforward: the shortcuts you actually use are now one tap away, no digging through menus. The update also adds a dedicated Control Center and Lock Screen control for Remote voice, a version of ChatGPT Voice that runs in Codex on the Mac.
That means you can hold a two-way conversation from your iPhone while the agent keeps working on your Mac. There is a wrinkle, though. That new Remote voice control shares the same icon as the regular ChatGPT Voice, which runs in the cloud — so at a glance, it may not be obvious which one you are triggering.
And if you were hoping to wire these shortcuts into Apple’s Shortcuts app, you are out of luck: they work only from the Home Screen, not as Shortcuts actions.
What else changed
OpenAI did not add support for large widgets on iPhone, nor an XL widget for iPad users. Instead, the company is leaning into its broader push to improve Codex Remote on iOS, alongside other design touches for iPhone and iPad: a redesigned “latest photos” picker in Chat and Work modes, a tweaked reasoning selector, and a new cloud browser feature.
Codex Remote is described as an “app inside an app” for iPhone and iPad — positioned as the only intuitive, full-featured way to start new chats in a remote agent running on macOS directly from iOS and iPadOS. The update was covered by MacStories, a long-running Apple-focused publication.
What to watch
The move signals where OpenAI is heading: treating the iPhone less as a standalone assistant and more as a remote control for heavier work happening elsewhere. With the widget now customizable and Remote voice reachable from the Lock Screen, the next question is whether the company will close the gap on iPad — and whether those Home Screen shortcuts ever make their way into the Shortcuts app. For now, the small and medium widgets are the whole story.
