If anyone on your team uses the ChatGPT desktop app on a Mac, there is a new feature worth understanding before someone switches it on.
OpenAI has released Computer History, which builds a searchable record of what you do on your machine so ChatGPT can refer back to it later. It logs clicks, keystrokes, keyboard shortcuts and app switches through the macOS accessibility framework. It does not capture screenshots, your microphone or system audio.
The catch is where that record goes. OpenAI’s own documentation states the files are stored on the Mac as plain text and are “not encrypted by Computer History, and other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them”. In plain English: what you typed while it was running sits in a readable file on that computer, and other software signed in under the same login can read it too.
OpenAI also flags that the feature increases the risk of prompt injection, where text sitting on a website or inside an app quietly issues instructions that the assistant then follows.
Some reassurance is in order. The feature is off by default. On Business and Enterprise plans an administrator has to enable it before a staff member can even opt in. It is macOS only, and it is not offered in the UK or Europe. Australia is not on that exclusion list, so it is available here.
What we would suggest:
- Decide now whether you want it used at all, rather than finding out after someone has turned it on.
- If you do use it, exclude apps holding financial, client, payroll or health information. OpenAI recommends this itself.
- Switch it off during conversations with other people unless they know. Recording a client without consent is a problem well beyond IT.
- Remember it is only as protected as the Mac login it sits behind. Shared logins and machines that never lock make this considerably worse.
None of this is a breach, and nothing has leaked. It is a new feature with a real trade-off that OpenAI has documented openly, and the decision is far easier to make before it is switched on than after.
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