OpenAI has quietly turned ChatGPT into something that watches how you work. The company rolled out Computer History on Thursday, an opt-in feature for the ChatGPT Mac app that logs your clicks, keystrokes, keyboard shortcuts and app switches, then stitches them into a searchable timeline of your day.

Who gets it and how it works

The feature is live for Pro, Business and Enterprise subscribers, but not yet in the UK, Switzerland or the European Economic Area, where OpenAI says access will follow in the coming weeks. Business and Enterprise admins must grant access before anyone can enable it, and even then every user opts in individually.

The pitch is continuity. Ask "what was I working on before my last break?" and ChatGPT or Codex answers, instead of you reopening 14 tabs to reconstruct it yourself.

How it differs from Windows Recall and OpenAI's Chronicle

No screenshots, for a start. Chronicle, the research preview this replaces, captured the screen. Computer History reads only what macOS exposes through its accessibility system — interaction events, not pixels — and skips microphone input, system audio and private browsing altogether.

That is deliberate distance from Microsoft's Windows Recall, which was pulled in 2024 over security and privacy objections before returning in reworked form roughly a year later.

Where your data goes

Events are processed on OpenAI's servers, then written back to your Mac as plain-text Markdown memory files under ~/.codex/memories/extensions/skysight/. Raw event files are deleted after 48 hours, and OpenAI says it does not use them for training.

The feature also requires Memories to be switched on, and it burns tokens while summarising.

The privacy caveats

The sharpest caveat is OpenAI's own: those memory files are not encrypted, and other programs running under your macOS user may be able to read them. The company additionally flags a higher prompt injection risk, since a malicious website could feed instructions to your assistant.

Users can pause collection from the menu bar, exclude specific apps or sites, and clear the last 10 minutes, hour, day, or everything.