The apps: phone, computer, browser

In the last lesson an account appeared. The website isn't the only place ChatGPT lives: there's a phone app and a separate program for the computer. Inside, it's the same AI with one shared history — a conversation started on the bus can be picked up at the computer in the evening, from the same line. But the three entrances have different characters, and which one ends up within reach decides whether the tool takes root in your life or stays a tab you opened once and forgot.

The browser: where the work is

The chatgpt.com tab is the workbench. At a computer you live in the browser anyway — mail, documents and spreadsheets are all next door — so everything to do with text naturally happens here. Copy a chunk of a report, paste it into the chat, ask for a shorter version, take the result back into the document: the whole cycle runs between neighbouring tabs, with nothing to install.

The browser has one more quiet virtue: it's the only entrance that works on somebody else's computer. On a trip, in a library, at your parents' — open the site, do the job, sign out. Nothing else required.

The phone: where everything else is

The phone app is the same ChatGPT, but built into the day. It all starts with installing it, and that's the one step worth being careful about.

Install from the App Store or Google Play and check one thing: the publisher must be OpenAI. The clones that charge for what's free were the last lesson's story — and app stores are where most of them live.

Installed and signed in? Now open the app and look at the bottom row of the screen: all the controls sit around the input field, and it takes a minute to learn them.

• ➕ to the left of the input field — attach. This is where you shoot with the camera or pick a photo from the gallery. A long letter arrives from the building management with the point buried somewhere inside — photograph it right on the kitchen table and ask: «What do they want from me and by when?» Half a minute, and two pages have become a short list and a date.
• 🎤 the microphone inside the input field — dictation. You speak, the phone turns it into the text of a request. More useful than it looks: typing something long is a chore and half the details get dropped, while out loud they list themselves. The more of them, the sharper the answer.
• 🎧 the icon to the right of the input field — voice mode. This is no longer typing but a real conversation: you talk, it answers in a voice, you can interrupt it. A big subject — it has a whole lesson of its own later in the course.

Everyone mixes up the microphone and the headphones at first. The way to remember: the microphone types for you, the headphones talk with you.

The desktop program: the third entrance — it comes in later

There's also a separate desktop app, but its time comes later. Its whole point is speed of summoning: the ChatGPT window appears over whatever you're doing on a hotkey — Alt+Space on Windows, Option+Space on Mac — and files can simply be dragged into it.

While you're turning to the AI a couple of times a day, there's no difference from the browser. It shows up later, when requests become genuinely frequent and fishing the right tab out of a dozen open ones gets old. So there's no need to install it on day one — it's a second-week tool.

How to make this stick

Habits have simple mechanics: what takes root is what's exactly one step away. A tool buried in the third folder of your phone won't become daily, however useful it is. Two minutes of arranging things saves weeks of warming up.

1. On the phone, drag the app icon to the first screen, next to the messengers. That's the company it should keep.
2. In the browser, pin the tab: right-click → "Pin". It moves to the far left and stops getting closed by accident.

Common questions about the apps

• Will it take much space? 100–300 MB, like an ordinary messenger. The model itself runs on servers — the phone only sends the request and receives the answer.
• Does it work offline? No. The thinking happens in a data centre, not in the phone: with no connection there's nobody to talk to. That's not a flaw of the app but how the whole technology works.
• Will it eat my data? Text weighs almost nothing. A voice conversation costs about as much as an ordinary messenger call.
• Is the history shared? Yes. Everything lives in the account: what you start on the phone continues at the computer — it's the same conversation.

Do the apps cost money

No — and this deserves saying out loud, because the fakes feed exactly here. Both the mobile and the desktop app are free. In this system money is only ever charged for the tier inside your account, and one subscription covers every device: pay at the computer and the phone becomes paid too, nothing extra to buy.

So the rule is simple: if an app asks for money to install or to "activate ChatGPT", you're looking at a clone. The official app is always free, and its publisher is always OpenAI.

Do this now

The app is already on your phone — time to try it. Photograph any piece of paper from the table — a bill, a manual, a warranty slip — and ask a question about it. Two minutes. For most beginners it's these two minutes, not any text, that answer the question "what is all this for".