At OpenAI’s DevDay 2025 yesterday, we found out that ChatGPT now has third-party apps, just like your mobile phone does, but with a few differences. Apps in ChatGPT don’t have their own launch icon on your home screen, as they do on a mobile device.
Instead, to launch an app, like Spotify, for example, in ChatGPT you just mention its name in your chat. So, you could type something like, “Spotify, make me a Foo Fighters playlist for tonight,” and the Spotify app will ‘surface’ (which effectively means a tiny Spotify icon appears just above where you write your message), and relevant suggestions might also appear. Spotify will then make you the playlist.
The best way to understand it is with a video like this one that shows it running:
The first time you use an app in ChatGPT it will ask you if you’d like to connect it, so you know what data you’re sharing with which apps.
There are already apps from Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow available right now, So, you can book a holiday, design a flyer, create a playlist, and find a new house all from within ChatGPT, so long as you are not inside the EU. EU customers will have to wait a little while longer.
Apps everywhere
Seeing how OpenAI is adapting the simplicity of its text prompt window to deal with running apps is really interesting.
There are only seven apps you can use right now with ChatGPT, but later this year OpenAI has said that it will be accepting app submissions for review and publication. It sounds like there’s money to be made in ChatGPT-land if you can grab some of that valuable app territory before somebody else does, so expect a huge rush of applications, and that’s what’s got me worried.
If I cast my mind back to the era when Apple and Google introduced their app stores, it didn’t take long for them to get swamped with low-quality apps that did their best to game the system and appear higher up in the rankings than they deserved to be by using misleading imagery and names. I wonder if the same thing will happen with ChatGPT?
Talking about the possibility of a ChatGPT App Store, OpenAI says it will, “launch a dedicated directory where users can browse and search for them.” So, that’s basically a “yes” to an App Store, complete with monetization options. I really hope the simple and easy-to-use ChatGPT interface doesn’t get drowned under a flood of garbage apps.
The first universal interface
At DevDay 2025, OpenAI’s Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT, said that going forward ChatGPT will function more like an operating system. “What you’re going to see over the next six months is an evolution from an app that is really useful into something that feels a little bit more like an operating system.”
I don’t think he was trying to say that ChatGPT won’t be useful anymore, just that it’s going to evolve. Even for a platform like ChatGPT that has already been radically reimagined several times in just the last few months, this will be a big change
Could you imagine owning a laptop or a phone that boots straight into ChatGPT instead of Windows or macOS? You’d just type, or say, what you want to do, and various apps and features would spring into life to help you.
On a future ChatGPT-powered device there would effectively be no real difference between searching the web, using your desktop, running apps, and instructing agents. There would be just one universal interface controlling everything – the text prompt window – and I’ve got a real feeling that’s where we’re heading.
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