How to bind ChatGPT advanced audio mode to action button on iPhone

I have a confession: Although I’ve been a tech journalist for most of my career and have been constantly rushing to adopt, or at least test, the latest and greatest in personal technology, I’ve never found voice assistants to do so. It is useful for me to use it regularly.

Part of that is because the technology has been so old so far: Apple has pushed the boundaries by acquiring and releasing Siri Back in 2011, she soon joined him Amazon Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant In 2014. While I was testing and using both, I stopped after a few weeks in both cases because I found myself constantly having to “fight” with the voice interaction — for example, pausing before I spoke about a question or repeating myself too much.

I know I’m not alone, as many articles have been written over the past decade and more about the shortcomings of each of these early voice assistants.

But then, along came OpenAI with ChatGPT, and its advanced human-like voice interaction mode — finally, after a long delay from its first target date — was launched. Back in September 2024.

Many AI users have noticed how useful and useful OpenAI’s advanced ChatGPT voice mode is: it is able to search the web for information and have entire conversations, analyze and respond to uploaded images, and even pause when interrupted and allow a human user to redirect or move the conversation to other topics quickly – just like a real human-to-human conversation.

Most recently, co-founder and president of OpenAI Greg Brockman reshared a post on X by AI power user and Wharton Business School professor Ethan Mollick Noting that with newer versions of the Apple iPhone it is possible to set its new “Action Button” to ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, allowing users to play audio with a single tap.

Advanced Voice Mode was already available to me as one of the installable and customizable widgets at the top of the iPhone’s lock screen, but that required you to actually look at the phone and find the icon.

Assigning Advanced Sound Mode to the iPhone’s physical action button — the small button on the left side of the device — seems like a more intuitive option that only requires a feel to activate. I just enabled it and hope it will finally lead me to use this amazing technology more often. Here’s how I did it:

You need a newer iPhone, from the 15 Pro and up

• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• 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 Volume Down buttons.

When you set up a new iPhone model with iOS 18 or later, the phone’s startup process should give you an option to select what you want to use the action button for. By default, it’s set to “silence” your iPhone’s ringtones and notification sounds.

However, if you’ve already set up your iPhone and don’t get or use this option, fear not! You can still edit it later. Here’s how.

Download the official ChatGPT iOS app from the App Store

It’s available here. While free ChatGPT users can still access it, there are… Variable monthly limit About how many times they can call up Advanced Voice Mode. Paying subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Team, Enterprise, and Edu (starting at $20 per month) all have a higher or unlimited cap on the number of Advanced Voice Mode interactions they can access.

Once you install the ChatGPT iOS app on your iPhone, move to the next step.

Go to Settings to reset your iPhone action button

Tap the “Settings” gear icon on your home screen. Next, scroll down to the second section of options and you’ll find the Action Button listed third, below General and Accessibility. Click on it.

This should open the Set Action Button app/option on your phone, which is a screen where you can swipe through different options to see what the action button will do when pressed.

Swipe left to cycle through the options (and right to return to an option) until you reach the option called “Shortcut” (it was screen nine for me).

Tap the up/down arrow selection screen below the text “Shortcut” and another selection screen should open, this time displaying a variety of shortcuts similar to those found in the official Apple iPhone Shortcuts app.

Except, if you scroll down under Start and any custom shortcuts you previously created in the My Shortcuts sections, you’ll see a list of third-party app icons that also provide shortcuts. Among them should be the ChatGPT iOS app. Click on this.

Finally, this should bring up another selection screen offering several different actions inside ChatGPT iOS app that can be mapped to your iPhone’s action button. You want to click to select the option that displays the little headphones icon labeled “Start Voice Chat.”

Tapping this will return you to the main action button selection screen, with the shortcut once again prominently displayed and “Start Voice Chat” listed as an action.

After all that, you can finally swipe up to close the Settings app and long-press the physical action button. You should pull up the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen which shows a blue circle indicating Voice Assistant. Start talking when you see this circle and you’re off to the races!

If you’re interested in setting up your iPhone lock screen like I did, go ahead also You have a tappable icon on the screen to activate ChatGPT advanced audio mode, and you can do that easily as well. Read how…

Again, you’ll need to download the ChatGPT iOS app (duh). After that, you can tap to wake your phone and long press on the time displayed at the top. This will take you to the lock screen/wallpaper customization screen, which looks like this:

Tap “Personalize” and then “Lock Screen” from the two options that appear:

After you tap Lock Screen, your iPhone should display an editable version of your Lock screen indicated by boxes around widgets and areas for interactive elements. It looks like this:

Go ahead and tap on the “Add Widgets” screen and it should appear, among many different options from different apps, one displaying the ChatGPT iOS app icon (flower design) with a small headphone icon inside it. Click this option and it will now appear in the top lock screen “shelf,” along with anything else you choose (I chose the weather widget).

That’s it! Happy voice chat and New Year.