I mapped my iPhone’s Control Button to ChatGPT – here are 5 ways I use it everyday

I never found a helpful use case for the Action Button on my iPhone 16 Pro, so when I saw the option to map ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice, the chatbot’s voice assistant, to the Action Button, I figured it was worth a try. A month after programming the Action Button to summon ChatGPT, I reach for it daily. 

As someone who never used ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice before, I didn’t expect to use the tool nearly as much as I do. However, holding down the button has made using Advanced Voice as easy as accessing Siri, while being much more helpful.

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The biggest perk of using ChatGPT’s tool is that it can understand your prompts in natural language, meaning you can speak to the AI as you would a friend. Because Advanced Voice supports multi-turn conversations, you can keep the conversation going as long as you’d like without losing prior context. The tool can also access the internet, and has on-screen and camera awareness, making its assistance multi-modal. 

To give you some ideas on how you can use Advanced Voice in your everyday life, I looked through my chat history to see how I have been using the tool lately. Here are some of my repeated use cases. 

1. Cooking dinner 

When I first got into cooking, I was reliant on recipes because I didn’t have the foresight or, dare I say, talent to whip up a meal from the ingredients in my fridge. However, as of late, I have been experimenting with cooking using the ingredients and seasonings I already have in my fridge and pantry. However, sometimes I need some additional coaching — enter ChatGPT.

For example, the other day, I knew I had the ingredients to make a bolognese sauce. However, I wanted a quick overview of the steps, so I just tapped the button and chatted with ChatGPT about what to do. The best part is that if you have follow-up questions about the steps, or want to tweak an ingredient, you can ask the AI and it will work in real time. 

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Another way the tool is helpful in cooking is if you need to tweak the proportions of a recipe. For example, my pesto recipe typically requires multiple cups of basil. However, I only had one cup because I was using leftover basil. Instead of trying to do the mental math for weird measurements, such as halving 3/4 cups, I asked the AI to tweak the rest of the ingredients (pine nuts, oil, and parmesan) accordingly, and it did so within seconds. The best part was the interaction was verbal, so I didn’t have to get my hands dirty while cooking. 

2. Composing an email 

The best part of using ChatGPT to compose an email is that it can take an idea and transform your thoughts into a flushed-out email. However, expressing the idea to ChatGPT can be tricky, as finding the words to type out the idea is nearly as much effort as typing out the actual email. When you use Advanced Voice, you can verbally express what you want the AI to write, rambling as much as you need. 

Then, once ChatGPT composes the email, the voice assistant will read it back to you, and you can tweak the text by explaining potential improvements. Once satisfied, you can exit the Advanced Voice window and copy and paste the final product from the transcript, ensuring you also get the benefits of the written text. 

3. Researching a topic thoroughly but quickly 

Keeping up with what’s happening in the world can mean additional research. Instead of turning to Google, I prefer going to ChatGPT, specifically the Advanced Voice tool when I am at home and can speak to it freely. The benefits include speaking to the AI as you would normally instead of using keywords, finding the answers to your questions directly, and interrupting and asking more questions as the tool explains its answer. 

I have used Advanced Voice to learn more about current events, as well as historical ones. For this article, I asked it to explain the Columbia and US tariffs situation, and the tool did so accurately and succinctly, citing The Wall Street Journal and Reuters as its sources. 

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When I exited the Advanced Voice tab, the chat/transcript had clickable links to the sources. I always recommend clicking on the sources to double-check the information as chatbots are prone to hallucinating. 

4. Planning a trip 

I realized how much I use ChatGPT daily when sitting at JFK Airport in New York having a full-blown conversation with the AI about what I should do in San Francisco once I landed. I had never been to San Francisco and had a few hours to kill. To figure out what to do, I used ChatGPT. Through the conversation with the chatbot, I was able to craft an itinerary which I followed upon landing, and all my sightseeing went smoothly. 

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Once back, I used ChatGPT to brainstorm vacation destinations with my partner. Once we’d thought of a city, I had conversations with ChatGPT about the best dates to travel, the flight length, the approximate costs of roundtrip travel, the number of days we should stay there, the activities we could do, and more. The best part is that we could both listen and talk to the AI, which helped to brief us on the subject. 

5. Providing context to what you see 

Suppose you see something and have a question about it. Instead of taking a photo and reverse-searching it on Google, or attaching the photo to a chatbot text prompt, you can tap the button, click on the camera button on the bottom-left corner, and chat about what you see. 

I have used this technique to identify plants, the meaning of signs in other languages, and more. For the sake of this article, I used it to determine the type of dog I have. The AI correctly told me that my dog was cute and that it was a Yorkshire Terrier. 

The limits 

All users can access Advanced Voice. However, the limits vary depending on your plan. OpenAI doesn’t specify the limits but does make it known that paid subscribers get more access. 

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“Usage of Advanced Voice (audio inputs and outputs) by Plus, Team, Enterprise, and Edu users is limited on a daily basis. Free users can access a monthly preview,” said OpenAI. 

I use ChatGPT Plus, the lowest subscription tier at $20 per month, and have never hit a limit when using the tool a couple of times daily.