How to Use ChatGPT for Mac Right Now, Bypassing the Waitlist

May 23, 2024 - 7 Comments

How to get ChatGPT for Mac right now and use it skipping the waitlist

OpenAI recently announced that an official ChatGPT app for Mac was coming with ChatGPT 4o support, complete with some pretty cool features like a keyboard shortcut to open a ChatGPT query from anywhere (kind of like Spotlight, but for ChatGPT), screenshot capabilities, ability to initiate discussions based on photos (for example, provide a picture of a plant and let ChatGPT determine what it is and how to care for it), and a very advanced voice conversation feature that blows Siri, Alexa, and every other voice assistant completely away. But part of the announcement from OpenAI was that ChatGPT for Mac was “coming soon”, and so it’s not available to download for all users, and even if you do manage to download the ChatGPT app for Mac (from a friend, social media link, or found on ChatGPT forums), you’ll be presented with a “coming soon – you do not have access to the desktop app yet” error message.

However, thanks to a super goofy little trick, you can immediately gain access to ChatGPT for Mac, and use it right now! Yes this means you can download ChatGPT for Mac right now, and skip the waitlist to use it right now too.

How to Bypass Waitlist to Get ChatGPT for Mac Right Now

This little waitlist bypass trick is as simple as it gets even if it’s goofy, but most importantly, it works to provide access to ChatGPT for Mac right away. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Download the ChatGPT for Mac client disk image file from the following URL*: https://persistent.oaistatic.com/sidekick/public/ChatGPT_Desktop_public_latest.dmg
  2. Mount the disk image and drag ChatGPT to the Applications folder on your Mac
  3. Open ChatGPT from the Mac and login as usual, you’ll get an error message that says “you do not have access to the desktop app yet”, and here’s where the very goofy trick comes in that lets you bypass the waitlist
  4. Bypass the Coming Soon waitlist for ChatGPT for Mac

  5. Login to ChatGPT again, and then have your fingers hovering over Command+Q so that you can quit out of ChatGPT the moment the window size changes, but right before the login error appears
  6. Login to ChatGPT

  7. Launch ChatGPT for Mac yet again, and now you’re using ChatGPT for Mac, successfully bypassing the waitlist
  8. Using ChatGPT for Mac with GPT 4o

There you have it, you’re using ChatGPT for Mac right now, no waitlist needed, no paid OpenAI account required. The only thing you need is a free OpenAI account, macOS Sonoma, and an Apple Silicon Mac.

This incredibly goofy waitlist bypass trick was posted on X/Twitter by product designer for Instagram, and who knows how he figured it out, but it 100% works! I personally had to try twice before I was successful with the timing of logging in and quitting when the window resizes before the error, but the second time it worked perfectly, and now I have full ChatGPT for Mac access.

With ChatGPT for Mac open, hitting Option+Spacebar will open a ChatGPT prompt from anywhere on the Mac:

ChatGPT for Mac launcher

The voice conversation feature works impressively well and sounds incredibly natural, accessed by clicking the headphones icon in the corner of the Mac ChatGPT client:

Voice conversations in GPT for Mac

Many of these features exist concurrently with the official ChatGPT for iPhone app which has been available for while now, and you can always use GPT 4 with Microsoft Edge, Copilot, or Bing too, but this is the first official ChatGPT for Mac application.

Is oaistatic.com legit and associated with OpenAI and ChatGPT?

* If you’re wondering if you should trust a random file downloaded from a random URL that you’re unfamiliar with, you have good internet hygiene and you are appropriately cautious!

OK, reasonably cautious internet using person, let’s do a little digging and see if oaistatic.com is in fact associated with OpenAI and ChatGPT, and if the download is legit.

Performing a whois on oaistatic

If you run a domain lookup with whois on oaistatic.com you won’t find much confirmation there because it’s using an identity protection registrar associated with Verisign, Amazon AWS, and CloudFlare. So that’s not going to verify this for us. (And BTW this doesn’t mean much on it’s own, since ChatGPT.com and OpenAI.com also use private registrars, and so do many if not most online businesses).

Searching for relationships between oaistatic.com and OpenAI / ChatGPT

How else can we verify that oaistatic.com is legit and associated with OpenAI? Let’s perform an actually useful Google web-only search to turn up some results specifically for that domain.

By searching the web for the oaistatic domain, you will find multiple threads on openai.com that mention oaistatic.com and cdn.oaistatic.com being accessed by ChatGPT developer tools. Additionally, on other forums like paloaltonetworks.com and reddit, you will also see references to cdn.oaistatic.com as to where ChatGPT is storing CSS and other files from users who were unable to access ChatGPT because their networks were blocking access to that URL. Furthermore, those forum posts mention that by unblocking firewall access to oaistatic.com they were able to successfully use ChatGPT. You can also find some references to network lookup services like this one at Netify that associate OpenAI with oaistatic.com. So this is all pointing in the right direction, but there’s still no guarantee, right?

And what does ChatGPT have to say about oaistatic.com?

Next up, let’s ask ChatGPT directly… is oaistatic.com associated with ChatGPT and OpenAI? To which it will reply something along the following:

The domain oaistatic.com is indeed associated with OpenAI. It is used by OpenAI to serve various assets required for their consumer-facing websites and applications. For instance, it hosts resources for the ChatGPT desktop application and other services provided by OpenAI. This domain has been verified as a legitimate part of OpenAI’s infrastructure   .

If you encounter this domain while using OpenAI services, it is safe and legitimate. This setup helps OpenAI manage and deliver their web content effectively.

So, ChatGPT thinks that oaistatic.com is verified and associated with OpenAI infrastructure, we have multiple reports online of people not being able to use ChatGPT until they allow access to oaistatic.com on their networks, and we have references to oaistatic.com from developers who use ChatGPT… I think we can reasonably conclude this is safe, but if you’re still suspicious, then you might want to continue waiting.

OK, but where did the download link come from?

The Mac ChatGPT download link appears to have first been posted by an interventional cardiologist and AI researcher on X/Twitter, and the link has been passed around social media since then. The download link, which uses the aforementioned oaistatic.com domain, still works, too.

Are you using ChatGPT for Mac right now by using this trick to bypass the waitlist? What do you think of the app and the native Mac experience? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Posted by: Jamie Cuevas in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

7 Comments

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  1. Mini says:

    You are my hero, this legit made my day. And it was a very bad one. Thanks

    ps: any1 else reading, take it from me: it works and it’s pretty sleek too. 💯

  2. peteruss says:

    I got it to work but not clear exactly what this app does as yet. After a couple of prompts, it told me I had used up my 4o limit and would have to wait another 6 hours and in the meantime use 3.5 or get Plus!

  3. Doc says:

    Well, that didn’t last long. They must have changed things, as Im unable to get it to work on my Mac. Only one screen displays when I double click on the app “You can’t use this….etc.”, and not the screen shown behind it in this article.

  4. Alex says:

    It does NOT work with anything less than macOS 14.0
    I wished you would have mentioned it in your article.

  5. CJ says:

    Nice one, but it requires Sonoma.
    IMHO is too bad pushing too hard to the latest OS, personally I’m still waiting for some third party software updates to work with Sonoma. Hope the final version will work at least on Ventura.
    Cheers

  6. newswede says:

    Read carefully. No intel support.

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