How to map OpenAI ChatGPT Advanced voice mode to your iPhone action buttons

Despite being a tech journalist and always eager to test the latest and greatest personal technology and embrace it, I’ve never found voice assistants useful to use on a regular basis.

In part, this was because the technology has been admittedly clunky so far: Apple pushed boundaries by acquiring Siri in 2011 and soon followed by the Amazon Echo smart speakers and Alexa voice assistant in 2014. After a few weeks of using both, I gave up. I was constantly “fighting” with the voice interaction. I would pause before I spoke and repeat myself too many times, for example.

It’s not just me, as many articles have been written in the past decade about the shortcomings of these early voice assistants.

Then came OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its humanlike Advanced Voice Mode, which was launched in September 2024, a long time after its original target date.

Many AI users have commented on how useful and helpful OpenAI’s ChatGPT Advanced voice mode is: able search the web for information, carry out full conversations, analyze images and react, and even pause when interrupted, allowing the human user to quickly redirect or move the discussion to another topic.

More recently, OpenAI’s cofounder and president Greg Brockman reshared a blog post by Wharton School of Business professor Ethan Mollick, who noted that the new “action button”on the Apple iPhone, can be mapped to ChatGPT Advanced voice mode, allowing users the ability to activate the voice with a single click.

Advanced Voice Mode was already available to me on my iPhone Lock Screen as one of the customizable widgets. However, you have to look down to 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 feel to activate. I just enabled it and am hopeful it will finally lead me to use this admittedly amazing tech more often. Here’s how I did it:

You will need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer

• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16 Pro Max

Action Button, a physical button, is located on the left side of newer iPhone versions, just above volume up and down buttons.

When setting up a new one of these iPhone models running iOS 18 or later, the phone’s starting process should give you an option to select what you want to use the Action Button for. By default, it is set to “silence” your iPhone’s ringer and notification sounds.

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

Download the official ChatGPT iOS App from the App Store.

You can find it here. ChatGPT free users can still use it, but there is a variable limit per month on how many times you can access Advanced Voice Mode. ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Pro, Team members, Enterprise and Edu subscribers pay $20 per month or more to access Advanced Voice Mode. Once you’ve installed the ChatGPT iOS application on your iPhone, continue to the next step.

Go to “Settings” to reassign the iPhone Action Button.

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

This should open the Action Button assignment application/option on your phone, which is a screen where you can swipe between different options for what the Action Button will do when pressed.

Swipe left to move through the options (and right to go back to one) until you reach the option labeled “Shortcut” (it was the ninth screen for me).

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

Except, if you scroll down below “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 pull up yet another selection screen showing various different actions within the ChatGPT iOS app that can be mapped to your iPhone’s Action Button. You want to tap to select the one that shows a small headphones icon labeled “Start voice conversation.”

Tapping this should bring you back to the main Action Button selection screen, with Shortcut once again displayed prominently and “Start Voice Conversation” now listed as the action.

After all that, you can finally swipe up to close the Settings app and long press on the physical action button. It should pull up the familiar Advanced Voice Mode screen showing a blue circle denoting the voice assistant. Begin speaking when you see this circle and you’re off to the races!

If you are interested in setting up your iPhone Lock Screen like I have, to also have a tappable onscreen icon to activate ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, you can do so pretty easily as well. Read on for how…

Once again, you’ll need to have the ChatGPT iOS app downloaded (duh). Then, you can tap to wake up your phone and long press on the time displayed at the top. This will bring you to the Lock Screen/Wallpaper customization screen, which looks like this:

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

After tapping “Lock Screen,” the iPhone should display an editable version of your Lock Screen denoted by boxes around widgets and interactive element spaces. It looks like this:

Go ahead and tap the “Add Widgets” screen and it should present, among many different options from different apps, one showing the ChatGPT iOS App icon (a flower design) with a small headphone icon inside it. Tap this one and it should now appear in your top Lock Screen “shelf,” alongside any others you choose (I chose a Weather widget).

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