ChatGPT Integrates Voice Mode into Main Chat Interface, Eliminating Separate Screen

ChatGPT's voice mode is no longer a separate interface | TechCrunch

ChatGPT's voice mode is getting more usable. OpenAI announced on Tuesday it is updating the user interface to its popular AI chatbot so users can access ChatGPT Voice right inside their chat, instead of having to switch to a separate mode. That means you'll be able to converse with the chatbot and view its responses, including things like shared images, as you talk. Before, you'd be taken to a separate screen where you'd interact with an animated blue circle that represented the interface for ChatGPT's voice. That screen also had a mute button and an option to record live video, as well as an X to return to the default text-based mode. During these prior conversations, you could only listen to what ChatGPT was saying, instead of seeing it on the screen. That could be annoying if you missed a response, as you'd have to leave the separate voice mode to see the response as text. Now, the company says you can talk and watch your answers appear as ChatGPT responds to your questions. You can also review your earlier messages and view visuals during your conversations, like images or maps, in real time. The change will make it more natural to interact with the AI chatbot, as you can more easily move between speech and text in the same conversation; however, you'll still need to tap "end" to stop the voice conversation when you're ready to switch back to text. This revamped voice mode is the new default and is rolling out now to all users across web and mobile apps. For those who prefer the separate voice mode, OpenAI says they can still revert to the original experience under "Voice Mode" in "Settings." Here, they'll see a new option to turn on "Separate mode."

This ChatGPT upgrade just fixed my biggest annoyance with voice mode - for free

The text of the live conversation will also appear on the screen. I always enjoy chatting by voice with ChatGPT. The cool British accent used by my favorite voice always sounds so friendly no matter what topic we're discussing. The only hiccup in the past was that a voice chat would always take you to a separate screen from the main chat, disrupting the flow of the conversation. Now, that hiccup has been remedied. With the latest version of the ChatGPT app for iOS and Android, you can now talk to the AI by voice from the same screen you use for regular chatting. With no separate voice mode to interrupt the flow, you can easily bounce back and forth between typing and speaking your words. Plus, the text of the conversation appears on the screen as you're speaking, so you're able to see the words without having to end the chat. Also: Want to ditch ChatGPT? Gemini 3 shows early signs of winning the AI race Even cooler, you can view images, maps, charts, diagrams, code, and other visuals in real time. Ask ChatGPT to display anything from an image of the Eiffel Tower to a map of London to Python code that shows the current date and time, and the visual should pop up in the midst of your conversation. You can even multitask while the conversation runs. Open another app on your device and continue talking. ChatGPT will keep listening and responding in the background. That means you can call on the AI for assistance while you're working with an app, file, website, or other item. To try this out, make sure you've updated ChatGPT to the latest version on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Fire up the app and kick off a new chat. Tap the voice icon to the right of the prompt and just start talking. ChatGPT will respond from the same screen. You can then continue the conversation by voice or type your question or response at the prompt. Either way, ChatGPT will speak and show you the words at the same time. To end the voice chat, just tap the End button at the bottom. Also: How ChatGPT actually works (and why it's been so game-changing) You can also control certain aspects of the voice chat. In the ChatGPT app, tap the double-line icon in the upper right and select your name at the bottom. On an Android device, tap the setting for Voice. On an iPhone or iPad, swipe down to the Voice mode section. Here, you can change the voice and turn background conversations on or off. And if you prefer the older, separate Voice mode screen, you can turn that on as well. Also: Want better ChatGPT responses? Try this surprising trick, researchers say With Google Gemini getting all the buzz lately, it's good to see OpenAI continue to innovate. Sure, the new voice integration may not be as earthshaking as a brand new model with all the superpowers of Gemini 3. But sometimes the little things also make a big difference in helping you use an app more easily and effectively.

ChatGPT Brings Voice Mode Into Conversations, No Separate Interface

With over a decade of experience reporting on consumer technology, James covers mobile phones, apps, operating systems, wearables, AI, and more. Like having conversations with your AI chatbot? ChatGPT's latest change makes it easier than ever to talk back and forth with its assistant, allowing you to do so without leaving your current conversation. Previously, voice mode on ChatGPT took you to an orb-like symbol to represent its AI. You couldn't view transcripts during the conversation, and the only buttons available allowed you to mute the microphone, end the chat, or interrupt. The new update builds the assistant into the conversation interface you're used to using, and it means you can switch between voice and text prompts seamlessly. You'll also get a live transcript of what ChatGPT is telling you. Any multimedia suggestions, such as maps, photos, or links, appear alongside the transcript. You can scroll back up through the conversation for previous information, if you want to reconfirm an earlier answer. You can activate the mode using the waveform icon on the right-hand side of the text prompt box in ChatGPT. The button turns blue when voice mode begins, and you'll hear ChatGPT introduce itself. There are also options to send the AI your own media through the microphone, camera, or by uploading files. The idea is to make the conversations with voice mode natural and intuitive. You still have to hit the end button to turn off the conversation. The redesign is now rolling out as part of the latest update to ChatGPT on Android and iOS, alongside the web and desktop versions. If you don't like the changes, OpenAI has you covered. You can head to ChatGPT's Settings menu, find Voice Mode and then toggle the option called Separate mode to on. It'll then revert to the previous design. Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

ChatGPT's Voice Mode moves into chats for faster, more natural conversations

With the update, Voice Mode will now display a live transcript as you converse with it and show more information, such as weather and maps, within the same chat. ChaGPT's mobile app and web version are getting a handy update that integrates its Voice Mode directly inside the chat. That means you no longer have to access the separate screen with the blue orb; you can just access Voice Mode within a chat. We previously reported on ChatGPT's Voice Mode coming to chats in an APK teardown of the ChatGPT app. When using the updated experience, ChatGPT's Voice Mode will display a live transcript as you converse with it. The AI will also be able to display information such as maps, weather, and more in real-time, also without having to leave the chat window. ChatGPT's Voice Mode enables users to engage in hands-free conversations with the AI, similar to Google's Gemini Live. You can have more natural, continued conversations with it, with the AI accounting for awkward pauses, tone, and expression. There are two versions of ChatGPT's Voice Mode -- a standard version for all users and an Advanced Voice Mode for paid users. Before the new in-chat experience, you could access ChatGPT's voice mode by tapping on the voice icon in the bottom right of the screen. This would open up a separate interface for voice chats. If you prefer using Voice Mode over the chat integration ChatGPT now offers, you can enable "Separate mode" under Settings > Voice Mode.

ChatGPT now lets you enable Voice mode directly inside your chat without switching -- here's how

OpenAI has announced it has just rolled out a major update to ChatGPT's Voice mode, which will make conversations smoother and more flexible. Instead of having to switch between separate screens for voice and text, ChatGPT now lets users move effortlessly between speaking and typing, all within a single, combined interface. The redesigned chat window means everything is in one place, and users can choose to talk, type, or combine both as they interact with the AI. Responses will now appear on the screen in real time, allowing users to keep up with the conversation, view earlier messages, and see any shared visuals like images and maps, without missing a beat. Previously, using ChatGPT's voice feature required switching into a separate 'voice mode'. This meant leaving the main chat view behind, which could disrupt the flow of conversation and make it harder to reference previous exchanges or shared messages and content. Now, ChatGPT blends voice commands with typed input in one seamless experience. Whether you're chatting hands-free on your phone during your commute or typing away at your desk, the AI adapts to your style. The update is designed to make conversations with the bot feel easier and more intuitive, allowing users to switch between speaking and typing in the same chat. To finish a voice conversation and return to just text, you still need to tap "end" before switching modes. OpenAI is also providing flexibility for those who might prefer the previous design, as you can switch back through ChatGPT's settings menu, where a 'Separate mode' option remains available. This revamped voice mode is the new default and is rolling out now to all users across web and mobile apps. What is ChatGPT's voice mode? If you've only ever used ChatGPT via its chat interface, you could well have missed out on one of the chatbot's most useful features. ChatGPT Voice allows you to have a natural conversation with an AI, speaking to it as you would to a human. You say something, ChatGPT processes it and replies. This same type of feature has been rolled out to most of the major chatbots today, and can be seen in the likes of Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Switching back and forth between voice and text is especially useful for those who like to have long-standing conversations with an AI, jumping back and forth between what is easier at the time. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds.

ChatGPT's new voice integration feels like the missing piece in AI chat - I've tried it, and it's almost perfect

OpenAI has just low-key released one of the best updates to ChatGPT it's made in months - voice chat's integration into regular chat. There was no grand Sam Altman tweet or big announcement. Instead, the OpenAI account simply tweeted, "You can now use ChatGPT Voice right inside chat -- no separate mode needed," and shared a video, which you can watch here: And just like that, everything about ChatGPT has changed. Previously, when you activated Voice Mode you'd leave whatever chat you were currently in, and the whole screen would change to a floating orb that pulsed as it talked - it always reminded me a bit of talking to the sinister eye of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or when Dorothy and the gang met the floating head of Oz the Great and Powerful in The Wizard of Oz. Voice Mode felt like you were uprooted from the rest of your ChatGPT experience and taken to a special place where the written word no longer existed, and you were banned from using your fingers to type. Instead, you had to listen carefully and wait reverently for its replies. Now Voice Mode is integrated into the regular chat dynamic, and it's instantly become ten times easier to use. You can now flip in and out of Voice Mode without leaving your text chat environment, switching between voice and text as needed. You just tap the Voice Mode button and start talking. ChatGPT replies to whatever you say while also giving you a live transcript in the chat. I much prefer this - you now choose between typing a text response or talking back, whichever you want. And when you don't want ChatGPT to listen for your voice, you just tap the "End" button. You can still 'go live' in Voice Mode by tapping the video button, which enables ChatGPT to 'see' through your camera and answer questions about what it's looking at. You can also use the new integrated Voice Mode to bring up things like maps and weather in real time. Getting the weather in Voice Mode is actually now very cool. When you ask what the weather is like, it plays a strange little tune, a sort of modern equivalent of a drum roll, before giving you a nice summary using its voice and a handy table of the next seven days' forecast. If it's just given you the weather for somewhere you're not, you can simply say, "Can you remember that I live in..." and it will update its saved memory. Voice Mode in ChatGPT is so much better than the experience many of us are used to with digital assistants like Alexa (not the new Alexa+) or Siri. It's so much easier to talk to ChatGPT - it's quick and responsive, and if you get bored listening to a reply, or it veers off into something you're not interested in, you can interrupt and ask another question. Gemini Live is equally as good, but ChatGPT's integration with text chat definitely puts it above Gemini now. What's nice is you can just ask ChatGPT what's in the news today using Voice Mode, and it will tell you while also showing you links in the chat to the stories themselves. It will also pull up maps of places for you, although these are just graphics - there's no integration with Apple Maps or Google Maps, which is a little disappointing. Even better, you can now use Voice Mode to create images. Just say, "Can you conjure up a frog on a skateboard for me?" and after about a minute, it should have your image ready. Or at least it says it will... I couldn't actually get this to work at all. I tried several times, and despite ChatGPT assuring me that my image was coming, nothing ever materialized. ChatGPT kept apologizing for the wait and telling me it would generate the image "in a moment," but nothing happened. So, there are clearly still a few wrinkles that need to be ironed out of the new Voice Mode, but if you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go. The Voice Mode update is described as "rolling out to all users globally on the ChatGPT mobile app and chatgpt.com." If you prefer the original Voice Mode experience of the floating orb, you can switch back anytime by going to Settings and turning on Separate mode under Voice Mode. They say that as technology evolves, it fades into the background and we don't even notice it anymore. Being able to access the internet used to be a novelty reserved for geeks, one that required specialized knowledge and the ability to expertly configure inexplicable hardware devices. Now Wi-Fi is expected to be everywhere all the time, and we only notice it when it's down. The same thing just happened to Voice Mode in ChatGPT. I've got a feeling I might just leave it on all the time while I work, so I can ask ChatGPT questions whenever I like - it's stopped being a special feature and moved into the background. What I've noticed is that I'm already using it much more than I used to, especially when I'm out and about. Typing on a mobile device is still not easy, so using your voice makes much more sense. And for me, that's the real story here. Voice Mode isn't a novelty anymore - it's becoming the default way I use ChatGPT, and the more it blends into the background, the more natural it feels. If this is the direction AI interfaces are heading, then this might be OpenAI's most meaningful update in months.

ChatGPT's voice mode just got a major upgrade - here are 5 things you need to know

ChatGPT's voice mode has long been a powerful way to augment your conversations with the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, but it's had a few weaknesses that have held it back. Now, though, OpenAI has updated ChatGPT to fix some of the major complaints people have had with voice mode, which should make it even more useful than before. Here's everything you need to know: Posting on X, OpenAI explained that you will now be able to use ChatGPT's voice mode inside the chat module itself, with "no separate mode needed." That could prove to be an important change that makes your experience much smoother. In previous iterations, you could start a text-based conversation with ChatGPT, but as soon as you switched to speaking, the screen would enter a separate voice mode. Now, enable voice chat during a text discussion and ChatGPT won't miss a beat, continuing the exact same conversation without resetting or starting from scratch. Don't like ChatGPT's new way of doing things? That's OK, because you can still put things back to the way they used to be. Despite the new interface, you can revert the interface by tapping your account in the bottom-left corner of the app to open Settings, scrolling down to the Voice mode section, and toggling 'Separate mode'. If the previous layout felt familiar and easier to navigate, this might be something you want to do. There are other benefits to the new update. Visually, you'll get a live transcript of your discussion and can review earlier messages after they've been completed. Plus, ChatGPT will be able to display the local weather forecast or a requested map within the chat window. That transforms your voice chats into a sort of hybrid mode that blends voice, text and informative widgets to give you the information you need at a glance. There's something else to be aware of with the updated voice mode: the model that powers it. While text-based chats with OpenAI's bot can be powered using the latest GPT 5.1 model, OpenAI says that voice sessions on paid plans "automatically begin with" GPT-4o, then switch to GPT-4o mini when your GPT-4o minutes have been used up. GPT-4o is the company's "most advanced voice model," but it's an earlier and less capable model than GPT-5.1 - so even though voice now lives inside chat, you won't get exactly the same experience or answers when using voice mode. Your usage of voice mode also depends on whether you have a paid ChatGPT plan or not. OpenAI says that for subscribers, "your daily use of ChatGPT voice is nearly unlimited each day" and is powered by GPT-4o, as noted before. Free users, on the other hand, will be placed on the GPT-4o mini model from the start and have limited usage each day. Regardless of which plan you're on, you should feel the benefits of the new ChatGPT voice mode update. OpenAI says it's "rolling out to all users on mobile and web," and you just need to update your app to take advantage.

OpenAI moves ChatGPT Voice into main chat thread

OpenAI has updated how its Voice mode operates within ChatGPT, moving voice interactions directly into the ongoing chat thread rather than isolating them in a separate interface. The change, applicable to both the web and mobile apps, allows users to see a real-time transcript of their spoken conversation alongside their standard text history. By tapping the "waveform" icon next to the text field, users can initiate a voice session that stays within the main chat window. This integration enables the AI to provide visual context to its verbal answers. In a demonstration, OpenAI showed the model displaying a map of local bakeries and photos of pastries while simultaneously discussing them, rather than relying solely on audio. While the new in-line view is the default, OpenAI has preserved the original full-screen, orb-based interface for users who prefer it. That layout can be restored by selecting "Separate mode" within the Voice Mode section of the app's settings. This update aims to better utilize the multimodal nature of the AI, blending voice, text, and visual outputs into a single stream.

ChatGPT's Voice Mode Will Now Open Directly Within the Chat Interface

The ChatGPT feature is available to all users on mobile and web OpenAI, on Tuesday, rolled out a new quality-of-life feature to ChatGPT, the company's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot app. So far, using the advanced Voice Mode opened a new full-screen interface where users could have a two-way voice conversation with the AI. However, with the new update, this functionality has been integrated within the chat interface, removing the separation. The San Francisco-based AI giant highlighted that the new implementation will allow users to view the messages while having the voice conversation. ChatGPT's Voice Mode Will Now Open in Chat In a post on X, the official handle of OpenAI announced that it was redesigning how the advanced Voice Mode feature works within the platform. Notably, the Voice Mode is a two-way real-time voice conversation feature where the chatbot responds to the user in a human-like manner, matching the pitch and tonality. It was first introduced by the company in July 2024 to paid subscribers, and then expanded to the free tier in August 2025. While earlier, the feature would open a separate full-screen interface, the new update allows users to speak with the AI while in the chat interface. One immediate benefit of the new capability is that users can now see and review the messages while engaged in a conversation. This also allows ChatGPT to show visuals such as maps, or help in shopping via its new Shopping Research tool. Additionally, it also opens new capabilities that users could not earlier use with the Voice Mode conveniently. For instance, users can now ask the chatbot to generate an image and then review it without ending the session, and suggest any changes they'd like to make. Voice-based vibe coding with ChatGPT is now also possible with this integration. However, in case users prefer the older setup and do not want to use Voice Mode within the chat interface, OpenAI has provided a way to turn off the new implementation. On the app, users will have to open the options menu (two horizontal lines on top left), tap on their name, and search for the Voice menu. On that page, users will have to toggle on the Separate mode option, and Voice Mode will open in the old style.

ChatGPT Voice now works right inside chats with live transcripts: Check details

The new experience is now the default for all users and is rolling out across mobile and web versions. OpenAI is making it easier to talk to ChatGPT by bringing the voice feature straight into the main chat screen. The company has updated the interface so you don't have to switch to a dedicated voice-only mode to speak with the AI. For context, earlier, if you wanted to use ChatGPT with your voice, the app would move you to a separate screen. There, an animated blue circle showed that ChatGPT was listening and speaking. That page also had a mute button, an option to record live video, and a close button to go back to the normal text chat. The old design had one big drawback: you could only hear ChatGPT's replies. If you missed something it said, you had to exit voice mode and return to the text view to read the answer. This made conversations less smooth, especially for longer or more detailed replies. Also read: Perplexity launches its own AI shopping experience, but with a catch With the new update, all of that happens in one place. You can speak to ChatGPT and, at the same time, watch AI's response appear as text on the screen. Also, you will see shared visuals like images or maps in real time. When you're done speaking, you still have to tap 'end' to stop the voice session and fully switch back to text-only use. Also read: Flipkart Black Friday Sale: Samsung Galaxy S24 FE price drops by Rs 28,000, check details This redesigned voice experience is now the default for all users and is rolling out across mobile and web versions. If you liked the old, separate voice screen, you can still go back to it. Just head to the app's Settings, and turn on 'Separate mode' under Voice Mode.