Environment

  • ChatGPT Classic 1.2026.184 (1784145287)
  • macOS Tahoe 26.5.2
  • Tested apps:
    • TextEdit
    • Visual Studio Code
    • Xcode

Problem

ChatGPT can access and read content from shared macOS apps, but edits generated by ChatGPT are not applied to the target application.

The issue is reproducible across multiple apps, so it does not appear to be specific to TextEdit, VS Code, or Xcode.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Open TextEdit and create a new empty document.
  2. Share the TextEdit document with ChatGPT.
  3. Ask ChatGPT to write TEST into the document.
  4. ChatGPT generates an edit/patch and reports that the change was sent.
  5. Check the TextEdit document.

Actual result

The document remains unchanged. TEST does not appear in TextEdit.

The same behavior occurs in Visual Studio Code and Xcode: ChatGPT can access the shared app context, but generated edits are not applied.

Expected result

When ChatGPT generates an edit for a shared application, the change should be applied to the corresponding document/file in that application.

Permissions / troubleshooting performed

The following troubleshooting steps were already performed:

  • Restarted ChatGPT completely.
  • Restarted the target applications.
  • Removed and re-added app/document sharing.
  • Tested with newly created documents/files.
  • Tested multiple applications: TextEdit, VS Code, and Xcode.
  • Disabled and re-enabled ChatGPT under:
    System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

After re-enabling Accessibility permission, ChatGPT displayed the dialog:

Enable Access Permissions

Clicking Open System Settings opened the macOS Accessibility settings. ChatGPT was enabled there successfully, but the permission dialog inside ChatGPT did not disappear.

Only after completely quitting and restarting ChatGPT did the permission dialog disappear and app context access start working again.

However, write/edit operations still did not work after the restart.

Additional observation

Under:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation

there is no entry for ChatGPT.

Under Accessibility, ChatGPT can only be enabled or disabled.

Current behavior

  • Reading/shared app context: works
  • Detecting the shared document/app: works
  • Generating an edit/patch: appears to work internally
  • Applying the edit to the target app: fails
  • Affected apps: TextEdit, VS Code, Xcode

This suggests the issue may be in the macOS app-integration write/edit path rather than in the individual target applications.