With the news that OpenAI’s ChatGPT Voice feature is now available to all free users, you can ditch Siri as your primary voice assistant on your iPhone — specifically the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, that is. Apple’s latest smartphones support the ability to configure the new Action Button, which replaces the Mute button that was present on the iPhone since its first appearance. Through a new Settings menu, users can convert the button to other uses beyond silencing their ringer.
Depending on your personal preferences, you can associate the action button with any number of tasks — it can open the camera, activate the lens, record a voice memo, open the Magnifier app, let you quickly use a function Accessibility or run App Shortcut.
The latter is the option you’ll want to use to turn the button into a trigger for ChatGPT.
Image Credits: Darrell Etherington
Before Wednesday’s announcement that made Voice access free for all ChatGPT users, however, associating this iOS shortcut with the action button would only result in an error, as Voice access required a ChatGPT+ subscription. Now, that’s no longer a problem, meaning anyone can ditch Siri for ChatGPT by configuring their Action Button to launch ChatGPT’s voice access feature.
To do this, you’ll need to scroll down to the Action Button menu on the iOS Settings screen, then swipe up to the Shortcut option near the end. You will then tap on the blue “Choose Shortcut” button and scroll down the alphabetical list of supported apps to tap on “ChatGPT”. On the next screen, simply tap on the existing Start Voice Chat shortcut to associate that action with the button.
Note that you should have the Shortcuts app you’ve downloaded to your iPhone, if it’s not already.
Once configured, you can long press the action button to start the ChatGPT voice session. Users can choose from five different different voices for their ChatGPT assistant — Ember, Sky, Breeze, Juniper and Cove. Then you can just speak your questions directly to ChatGPT and hear its answers — like Siri but much, much smarter.
We should note that ChatGPT is far from the only app that supports the iPhone 15 Pro and the new Pro Max feature. You can also use this button for other common tasks, such as positioning your favorite Starbucks order coffee, start a workout, Shazam a song, call a loved one, create a new note and more.
Some third-party apps have also adopted the Action Button’s shortcut functions, including music apps like AirScrobble, Album, Ed, Longplay, Music Tracker, MusicHarbor and Stick it on; recipes and food applications such as Amber, Calories and Crumble; utilities like CardPointersOpal, Sleep Cycle Kids, Tide Guide and WaterMinder; productivity apps like I did it, Drafts, Focused Work, Good links, I am looking, Back, Rows, Duties, Things, Thoughts, TickTick and Timing; photo apps like Halide; workout apps like Lifting; reading apps like Books and Instapaper. meditation apps like Zenitizer; entertainment applications like Watching a movie and Soka; and even other AI utilities like Petey, among others.
Apple’s first-party apps are also supported.
If none of these fit the bill, you can also configure your own custom shortcuts by tapping the plus sign + in the top-right corner of the main Shortcuts app screen, then tapping New Shortcut, Rename (to add shortcut name), then “Done”.
You’ll then tap Add Action to see a list of available action categories, each of which you can tap (such as Media or Web) to find the action you need and add it to the shortcut. To add another action, swipe up on the search field at the bottom of the screen, then select an action again. When you’re done, tap Done and your new custom shortcut is added to your collection, where you can find it in both the All Shortcuts and My Shortcuts categories. When this process is complete, you can then return to the Action Button menu and assign the custom shortcut to the button.
However, we’d argue that adding ChatGPT support is one of the best options here, given the AI chatbot’s usefulness in a number of everyday queries to address Siri’s lackluster capabilities.
Now if only we could make it the default assistant on the iPhone…
