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I have a confession to make: Although I have been a tech journalist for much of my career and have always been eager to adopt, or at least test, the latest and greatest personal technology, I don’t I’ve never really found voice assistants to be useful for me to use regularly.
Part of the reason is that the technology has been pretty clumsy so far: Apple has pushed the boundaries by acquiring and releasing Siri in 2011, and was soon joined by the Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant in 2014. While I tested and used both, I stopped after a few weeks in both because I found myself constantly having to “fight” with the voice interaction – pausing before speaking a query or repeat myself too often, for example.
I know I’m not alone, as many articles have been written over the past decade about the shortcomings of these first two voice assistants.
But then along came OpenAI with ChatGPT, and its human-like advanced voice mode audio interaction was launched – finally, after a long delay from its first target date – back in September 2024.
Many AI power users have noticed how useful OpenAI’s ChatGPT advanced voice mode is: capable of scouring the web for information and conducting full conversations, analyzing and reacting to images that are uploaded there, even pause when interrupted and allow the human user to quickly redirect or move the conversation to other topics – much like a real conversation between humans.
And more recently, co-founder and president of OpenAI Greg Brockman reshared a message on X by Ethan Mollick, AI power user and professor at the Wharton School of Business noting that it is possible with newer versions of Apple’s iPhone to map its new “action button” to the ChatGPT advanced voice mode, allowing users to activate voice with a single click.
I already had Advanced Voice Mode available to me as one of the pinnable, customizable widgets at the top of my iPhone’s lock screen, but it requires you to look at the phone and find the icon.
Mapping Advanced Voice Mode to the iPhone’s physical action button — the small one, located on the left side of the device — seems like an even more accessible option that requires only a simple feel to activate. I just enabled it and hope it will finally get me to use this admittedly amazing technology more often. Here’s how I did it:
You need a newer iPhone, from 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro
- iPhone 15 Pro Max
- iPhone16
- iPhone 16 Plus
- iPhone 16 Pro
- iPhone 16 Pro Max
The Action button is a new physical button located on the left edge of newer versions of the iPhone, just above the volume up and down buttons.
When setting up a new iPhone model running iOS 18 or later, the phone’s startup process should give you the option to select what you want to use the action button for. By default, it is set to “mute” your iPhone ringtone and notification sounds.
However, if you already set up your iPhone and didn’t get this option or aren’t using it, fear not! You can always adjust it later. Here’s how.
Download the official ChatGPT iOS app from the App Store
It is available here. Although free ChatGPT users can still access it, there is a variable monthly ceiling on the number of times they can call advanced voice mode. Paid ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise, and Edu subscribers (starting at $20 per month) all have much higher or unlimited caps on the number of advanced voice mode interactions they can access.
Once the ChatGPT iOS app is installed on your iPhone, proceed to the next step.
Go to “Settings” to reassign the iPhone action button.
Tap the “Settings” gear icon on your home screen. Next, scroll down to the second options section and you should find the “Action Button” listed in the third position, under “General” and “Accessibility”. Tap it.
This should open the action button assignment app/option on your phone, which is a screen where you can cycle through different options to find out what the action button will do when pressed.
Swipe left to cycle through the options (and right to return to one) until you reach the option labeled “Shortcut” (this was the ninth screen for me).
Tap the up/down arrow selection screen below the “Shortcut” text and it should open another selection screen, this time displaying a variety of shortcuts similar to those found in the official Apple iPhone Shortcuts app.
Except that if you scroll down under “Get Started” and any custom shortcuts you previously created in the “My Shortcuts” sections, you’ll see a list of third-party app icons that also offer shortcuts. Among them should be the ChatGPT iOS app. Tap this.
Finally, this should bring up another selection screen displaying various different actions. In the ChatGPT iOS app which can be mapped to your iPhone’s action button. You want to tap to select the one that displays a small headset icon labeled “Start Voice Chat.”
Tapping it should take you back to the main action button selection screen, with the shortcut again prominently displayed and “Start Voice Chat” now listed as an action.
After all that, you can finally swipe up to close the Settings app and long-press the physical action button. It should display the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen showing a blue circle denoting the voice assistant. Start talking when you see this circle and you’re off to the races!
If you want to configure your iPhone’s lock screen like I did, Also having a tapable on-screen icon to activate ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode, you can also do that quite easily. Keep reading to find out how…
Again, you’ll need to download the ChatGPT iOS app (duh). Then you can tap to wake up your phone and long press the time displayed at the top. This will take you to the lock screen/wallpaper customization screen, which looks like this:
Tap “Personalize” then “Lock screen” from the two options that appear:
After tapping “Lock Screen,” iPhone should display an editable version of your lock screen indicated by boxes around widgets and interactive element spaces. It looks like this:
Go ahead and tap on the “Add Widgets” screen and it should present, among many different options from different apps, one showing the ChatGPT iOS app icon (a flower pattern) with a small icon of helmet inside. Tap on it and it should now appear in the top “shelf” of your lock screen, alongside any others you choose (I chose a Weather widget).
That’s it! Happy voice chat and happy new year.
