According to engadget, OpenAI has launched an app directory directly inside ChatGPT, available now on iOS, Android, and the web. The new section is divided into categories like Feature, Lifestyle, and Productivity, and includes apps from companies like Booking.com, Spotify, and Dropbox. To use an app, users click on it, hit “Connect,” and authorize it, after which they can mention it in a chat with an @ symbol. New additions include an Apple Music app and a DoorDash app for turning recipes into shopping carts. Alongside the store, OpenAI is now allowing developers to submit their own apps for review and publication, providing resources like an SDK, best practices, and a quickstart guide. For now, developers can only monetize by linking out to their native apps, though OpenAI says it’s exploring internal monetization options.
What this means for users
Basically, ChatGPT is trying to become a one-stop shop. Instead of bouncing between a dozen different apps and websites, you can now theoretically do a bunch of stuff from a single chat interface. Need to summarize a Dropbox report, make a Spotify playlist for a party, and order groceries from DoorDash? You can @ mention each app and do it all in one thread. It’s a convenience play, for sure. But here’s the thing: will people actually want to do this? Chatting with a DoorDash bot to build a cart feels more cumbersome than just using the app for a lot of folks. The real test will be if these integrations feel seamless and genuinely useful, or just like a gimmicky layer on top of apps that already work fine on their own.
The developer play
This is where OpenAI‘s strategy gets really clear. By opening up submissions and publishing developer guidelines and a quickstart guide, they’re betting big on ecosystem. They want a thousand little apps to bloom inside ChatGPT. The promise is a “thriving ecosystem,” as they put it. And they’ve made it relatively straightforward to build these “connector” apps, which they’re now just calling apps. But the monetization piece is still fuzzy. Linking out to your paid service is okay, but it’s a friction point. If OpenAI can crack a native, in-chat payment system, that’s when you’ll see a gold rush. Until then, it’s mostly a branding and user acquisition channel for existing services.
Privacy and the platform shift
OpenAI emphasized privacy, requiring clear policies from app makers. That’s good and necessary, because you’re granting these apps access to your ChatGPT conversations. But it also highlights the central tension: ChatGPT wants to be a platform, a new layer on the internet. It wants to sit between you and the services you use. That gives OpenAI immense power and insight. For companies like Spotify or Dropbox, playing along means potentially getting more users, but also ceding some control and data to OpenAI’s interface. It’s a classic platform gambit. Will big tech companies fully embrace being a mini-app inside someone else’s chatbot? Or will they hold back? The early participants suggest some are willing to test the waters.
The bigger picture
Look, this isn’t just about adding a few handy tools. This is a direct move to make ChatGPT more “sticky” and versatile, fulfilling Sam Altman’s vision of custom GPTs leading to action. As detailed in their announcement, the goal is to make apps feel like a natural extension of conversation. It’s an attempt to evolve ChatGPT from a brilliant but passive text generator into an active assistant that can actually *do* things for you in the real world. If it works, it could fundamentally change how we interact with software. But that’s a huge “if.” It needs killer apps, not just convenient ones. And it needs users to change their habits. That’s the hardest part of building any new platform. OpenAI has built the store. Now we see if anyone comes to shop.
