ChatGPT Challenges Gemini's Dominance: Now Available as Default Android Assistant

You can set ChatGPT as your default Android assistant now. Here's how

Earlier this year, Perplexity rolled out an Android app that gave you the ability to make it your default voice assistant over Gemini. You now have that option with ChatGPT, too. ChatGPT's Android app isn't new itself, but the latest update to the app (v1.2025.070 beta) lets you replace Gemini with OpenAI's chatbot. If you do this, you'll be able to launch ChatGPT by whatever method you use now -- long-pressing the home button, swiping up from the corner of the screen, or long-pressing the power button. You can't trigger it by voice like you can with Gemini, and even if ChatGPT is your default, saying "Hey, Google" still brings up Gemini. Also: Google Gemini just made two of its best features available for free ChatGPT will launch in voice mode, which many users say is not quite as robust as text mode, but still has plenty of value. You should know, though, that if you opt for ChatGPT over Gemini, you will be giving up a few things. You won't be able to control Google Home devices, change any settings, control music playback, or add things to your Google Calendar. You can still do some tasks, like setting timers or reminders, but those will be handled from the ChatGPT app instead of your built-in Google apps. If you have the latest version of the ChatGPT app, head to your phone's settings menu, then find Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app. From there, tap "Default digital assistant app" (you'll see your current assistant below this), and you'll have the option to choose ChatGPT. Also: Worried about DeepSeek? Turns out, Gemini and other US AIs collect more user data Whether or not you should switch ultimately comes down to what you want your Android assistant to do. The fact that Gemini is so deeply tied into other Google services and apps is a big reason to stay, but if you're looking for better voice conversation, ChatGPT is probably the winner.

You can now replace Gemini with ChatGPT on your Android phone

Summary You can now set ChatGPT as the default assistant on Android, replacing Gemini. This will enable you to quickly invoke ChatGPT's voice mode by long-pressing the power button or swiping up from the screen's corner. Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT for Android cannot control system settings. Google has been making steady improvements to Gemini, with the company recently bringing several features from its Advanced paid tier to the free version. But Gemini is not the only AI-powered chatbot that you can use on Android. At the beginning of this year, Perplexity released its Android app, allowing you to replace Gemini on your Android phone. Now, OpenAI's ChatGPT is following suite, with its latest app update enabling you to replace Gemini with ChatGPT on your Android phone. Related ChatGPT and Gemini may soon see competition from a Meta AI chatbot Just another way to feed Meta your data Posts First spotted by the folks at Android Authority, the latest beta release of ChatGPT (v1.2025.070 beta) allows you to set the app as the default assistant on your Android phone. After installing the newest beta, head to Settings > Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app and select ChatGPT instead of Google to replace Gemini with OpenAI's assistant on your phone. Close After this, you can invoke ChatGPT by long pressing the power button or by swiping up from the corner of your phone's screen. This will bring up ChatGPT's voice mode, enabling you to have a natural conversation with the AI chatbot. As a heavy ChatGPT user, I would have instead preferred if the AI chatbot popped up on screen with a small text input window as well, like Gemini. ChatGPT does not integrate as deeply with Android as Gemini Close While ChatGPT may outperform Gemini in certain scenarios, it comes with some limitations on Android. Even if you set it as your default assistant, ChatGPT cannot control your Google Home devices, adjust system settings, or perform similar tasks. Likewise, you cannot use ChatGPT to control Spotify music playback, add calendar entries to your Google Calendar, etc. Also note that even after replacing Gemini or Google Assistant, you cannot trigger ChatGPT with a hotword on your phone. Saying "Hey, Google" will still activate Gemini. Despite these limitations, if you prefer ChatGPT to Gemini, you can now set it as the default assistant on your phone for a better experience. Plus, since the feature just rolled out on the beta channel, there's always a possibility that OpenAI will address many of the limitations in a future release. If you are not part of the ChatGPT's beta test channel, you can sideload the APK from APKMirror.

ChatGPT can now replace Gemini as your default assistant on Android

If you're content with what Google offers in Gemini, you might leave the AI assistant as your default option when it comes to long-pressing the power button. However, the digital assistant that you conjure with a button press or swipe up from the corner can be changed, and a new update to the ChatGPT beta means it's now a default option. There are a lot of AI assistants available now, from Google's own Gemini to Perplexity and many others. The listed two allow you to set them as a default assistant in Android. That means it will be the go-to option when users activate it via the power button shortcut that has been around since Google Assistant. It's useful if you find yourself using another AI assistant in lieu of Gemini. The newest beta version of ChatGPT has added the option to make the AI model your default option in Android (via Android Authority). This comes as a part of version 1.2025.070, and the default digital assistant page now lists ChatGPT as an option among a few others, so long as they are installed. With the function being in beta, the app clearly lacks some of the luster that Gemini or even others like Perplexity offer. Long-pressing the power button will trigger ChatGPT's voice mode with a bubble overlay on the screen. At first, the app tries to open in full through chat mode, but after some time, it switches over to an overlay, which is preferred. This overlay mode is the same one that can be triggered via the new Quick Settings shortcut released at the beginning of 2025.

ChatGPT just got a massive update that lets you replace Gemini on your Android phone

In the battle of generative AI assistants on smartphones, Google Gemini has one major advantage over ChatGPT: it's built into Android. Even if you find ChatGPT to be consistently more helpful than Gemini, it's still significantly less convenient with all the quick shortcuts drawing you towards Google's solution. That has changed with the latest version of the ChatGPT beta for Android, which lets you supplant Gemini in almost every way. In the v1.2025.070 beta, Android users can make ChatGPT their default -- meaning the buttons and gestures that previously summoned Gemini can now call up OpenAI's alternative. For example, users will now be able to launch ChatGPT by long-pressing the home button on three-button navigation setups, or by swiping up from the bottom corner if using gesture navigation. If you have a long-press of the power button enabled for AI launching, that'll work too. It's important to note that these shortcuts bring up ChatGPT in voice mode, which isn't ideal for every situation. It also has one major limitation that it can't be bound to a custom hot word, because that needs the kind of access to Android system APIs that is only granted to trusted pre-installed apps, for obvious, security-related reasons. Nonetheless, this is still a big improvement to previous workarounds to get ChatGPT as the default Android assistant, which used to involve downloading third-party apps like VoiceGPT. While generative AI assistants all claim to do similar things, the results can often be hugely different. There's often no objective measure on which provides better answers, and it's largely down to personal preference -- although all AI is prone to worrying hallucinations. In the battle of Gemini vs ChatGPT, it really is often too close to call. In our own comparison, we found that ChatGPT won 4-3 in our tests but Gemini lost the creative writing category only because it went over the requested word count. So you can see the kinds of fine margins we're talking about here -- indeed, when we did similar tests on ChatGPT o3-mini vs Gemini 2.0 Flash, the result was flipped, with Google beating Open AI by five to three. It doesn't have to be either/or, of course. For its part, Apple is reportedly set to try and get the best of both worlds by adding Gemini to Apple Intelligence alongside ChatGPT. "We think ultimately people are going to have a preference perhaps for certain models that they want to use, maybe one that's great for creative writing or one that they prefer for coding," Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi said, at last year's WWDC event. In the battle for phone-based AI helpers, there's clearly still everything to play for.

Google's going to let you replace Gemini with other assistants on Android

If you are an Android user wanting to avoid Google Gemini as your default digital assistant, you're in luck! The latest beta version of ChatGPT allows you to set it as your default. Android Authority first explained that setting ChatGPT as the default digital assistant makes it easier to access. Once configured, you can bring up ChatGPT by pressing the home button long. If you use gesture navigation, swipe up from the bottom corner of the screen. If enabled, you can also launch ChatGPT by long-pressing the power button, which activates its voice mode. Recommended Videos One thing to remember: if you set ChatGPT as your default voice assistant, you won't be able to activate it using a custom hot word. This feature requires access to privileged APIs only available to trusted, preinstalled apps, which ChatGPT is not. Please enable Javascript to view this content Changing the default voice assistant on Android requires ChatGPT v1.2025.070 beta. To do so, go into the Settings app, then choose Apps > Default apps > Digital assistant app and select ChatGPT instead of Google to replace Gemini. ChatGPT is an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI. It is designed to engage in human-like conversations and can understand and generate natural language text. At its core, ChatGPT utilizes a sophisticated language model trained on vast amounts of text data. This training enables it to respond to various prompts and questions. Its versatility allows ChatGPT to perform various tasks, including generating written content such as articles, essays, and code, providing information, and participating in interactive discussions.

You Can Now Use ChatGPT As Your Default Android Assistant

ChatGPT can take the place of Gemini, but it doesn't offer the same range of features. The pace of AI development doesn't seem to be slowing down, and we're seeing a flurry of updates for the big apps and models every week. One of the most recent of those updates makes it easier to integrate ChatGPT into Android: You can now set it as the default digital assistant on your phone or tablet. As spotted by Android Authority, you need to have the beta version of ChatGPT for Android installed for this to work at the moment, though the feature will no doubt roll out to everyone in due course. If you'd rather have ChatGPT answering your questions about life, the universe, and everything, this makes it easier to access. To access the beta for ChatGPT, you need to have ChatGPT for Android installed already. Then, open the Play Store on Android, tap your profile picture (top right), and choose Manage apps and device > Manage. Select ChatGPT to see its full listing page, and you should then see a Join the beta box you can tap Join in. The usual rules for betas apply: You get access to the newest features first, but you might also see more bugs along the way. After a few minutes, once you've been registered as a ChatGPT beta tester, you'll see an update appear for the app and you can then dive in. Changing this setting doesn't give ChatGPT any more capabilities -- it just means the AI bot can be launched in the same ways you would normally launch Gemini. That can be with a long press on the power button or a swipe up from the bottom-right corner of the screen, depending on how your device is configured, though there's no "hey ChatGPT" voice shortcut you can use. This will work for all ChatGPT users, whether you've subscribed to a paid plan or not, though the features and underlying AI models you get once you've launched ChatGPT will depend on your subscription level. The bot appears on screen as a floating blue circle and goes into the Gemini Live voice mode that's now available to everyone, so you can have a two-way spoken conversation with it. Bear in mind the limitations of ChatGPT as a digital assistant at the moment: It doesn't have anywhere near the same feature set as Google Gemini when it comes to getting its hooks into Android and your other apps. You can't use ChatGPT to set timers or add events to your Google Calendar, for example, and you can't queue up songs in Spotify. On the other hand, you can have a chat about almost every topic imaginable (watch out for hallucinations), and get information that's available on the web -- such as the latest sports scores or the local weather forecast for your part of the world. You can get ChatGPT to invent text, create images, and everything else the chatbot is capable of. No doubt more improvements are on the way before OpenAI rolls this option into the stable ChatGPT app. It's an interesting contrast to the iPhone: It seems unlikely that Apple will ever allow an alternative app to take Siri's spot as the default assistant, even if you can now access ChatGPT through Siri.

You Can Now Set ChatGPT as Your Default Assistant on Android

The ChatGPT overlay can also be activated using the Power button long-press shortcut. There's no shortage of AI assistants on Android. You've got the default Gemini app, which replaced Google Assistant, and then others, popular names like Perplexity and ChatGPT. While you could use ChatGPT pretty well, one of the things it lacked was the ability to set it as your default assistant. Well, that's no longer the case after a recent update. After a recent beta update to ChatGPT, users can now set the app as Android's default voice assistant. With version 1.2025.070, the "Default digital assistant app" page in the Settings app shows ChatGPT as one of the options. All you need to do is select ChatGPT to set it as your default assistant. Besides, you can also assign the long-press power button shortcut to ChatGPT for easy access. The feature might not be rolling out to all beta users, though, as using the latest Beta, we couldn't see the option in settings. The overlay bubble clearly needs some polish, as the animations are still far off from what Gemini or Perplexity offer. That said, this is not the only shortcut to invoke ChatGPT on Android. Not too long ago, the app also rolled out a Quick Setting tile. Besides using the power button, if you're on Pixel, you can use the bottom swipe gesture to invoke ChatGPT as well. These shortcut features are clearly a boon to those who use ChatGPT a lot. What's the default assistant app on your Android phone? Is it now going to be ChatGPT? Let us know in the comments below.