ChatGPT can now read your open Chrome tabs, and click around in them for you

ChatGPT can now look through the tabs you already have open in Google Chrome, and in its agent mode it can work inside them for you, OpenAI announced on X on Thursday. The upgrade comes through the ChatGPT browser extension, which Chrome’s web store lists with about 7,000,000 users, and it lands a few months after OpenAI wound down its own ChatGPT Atlas browser.

The pitch is simple: instead of copying and pasting from a dozen tabs, you tag Chrome in ChatGPT and let it read them.

A few big upgrades for Chrome users today! We’re bringing the power of computer use to anyone who uses Chrome.

First up: ChatGPT can now use your tabs in Chrome to make answers more useful and get things done for you.

If you’re in Chat, it can look across your open tabs and gather info.

If you’re in Work, ChatGPT can control your Chrome tabs to get things, like sending messages, filling out forms, or downloading files. It can even help you organize and group that pile of tabs you have open.

— ChatGPT (@ChatGPT) October 15, 2026

Two modes: read in Chat, act in Work

There are two levels to the new feature. In ChatGPT’s ordinary Chat mode, the assistant can look across your open tabs and pull information from them, so you can ask it to compare three sofas you have open in three shops, for example. In Work, the agent mode, it goes further and controls the tabs: sending messages, filling in forms, downloading files and tidying a messy browser into tab groups.

According to OpenAI’s browser extension guide, you can mention a specific open tab in the ChatGPT desktop app to use that page as context, or highlight text on a page and bring just that passage into a chat. A side panel puts ChatGPT, with your full conversation history, next to the page you’re reading; on a YouTube video with captions it can use the timestamped transcript to answer questions. The extension’s store listing says ChatGPT works “in the background, without ever taking over your active browsing session.”

Not only Chrome

Despite the Chrome branding, the guide says the same extension works in Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi on the desktop. All five support tab mentions and browser control from the ChatGPT desktop app; Opera is the exception for the side panel. OpenAI’s post didn’t say which ChatGPT plans get each mode, and the guide says availability “can depend on rollout and your workspace settings.” OpenAI hasn’t listed any country restrictions, so it should reach users in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia and elsewhere where ChatGPT is offered, though business accounts may find it switched off by an admin.

It is a step towards the always-on agents OpenAI pitched at DevDay last month, where its new dots got their own cloud computer and browser. The difference here is that ChatGPT works in your browser, with your logins.

“Read and change all your data on all websites”

That is where the caution comes in. OpenAI’s guide says ChatGPT “can read or act on sites where you’re already signed in, such as LinkedIn, Salesforce, Gmail, or internal tools,” and lists the permissions Chrome may ask for at install, including the ability to “read and change all your data on all websites” and to read and change browsing history on all signed-in devices.

OpenAI’s safeguards sit on top of those permissions. By default ChatGPT asks before it uses each new website, with options to allow once, allow for that site, allow for all sites or decline, and users can keep an allowlist and blocklist of domains. OpenAI marks “allow for all sites” and browser history access as elevated risk; history is always requested per task, with no always-allow option, and the store listing says ChatGPT will always ask before downloading or uploading files.

The guide is also blunt about the main threat for browsing agents, prompt injection: it tells users to “treat page content as untrusted context” and warns that malicious page content “can increase the risk that ChatGPT copies this data somewhere unintended.” OpenAI says it doesn’t keep a separate record of your browser actions, only what becomes part of the chat, such as page text, screenshots and tool calls, which then fall under your ChatGPT data controls (our privacy comparison explains those settings). It advises against sending secrets or highly sensitive data through browser tasks unless you are present to review each prompt. OpenAI’s agents have already caused trouble on live sites: the company apologised to Australia’s parliament last month after its agents broke into government portals.

Why it matters

With Atlas gone, OpenAI is taking its agent to the browser most people already use, where Google is pushing Gemini’s own auto browse feature. Letting ChatGPT act inside signed-in tabs makes it far more useful, and it makes the permission prompts worth reading carefully before you click “allow for all sites”.

Sources: ChatGPT on X, OpenAI browser extension guide, ChatGPT on the Chrome Web Store, The Verge (Atlas shutdown).