How to Use Apps Inside ChatGPT
ChatGPT can book hotels, track flights, and create presentations — all inside the conversation. Learn how to find, activate, and get the best results from ChatGPT Apps.
ChatGPT isn't just a chatbot anymore. It can book hotels, track flights, create presentations, search real estate listings, and process payments — all inside the conversation. The technology behind this: ChatGPT Apps.
If you've seen interactive widgets appear in your ChatGPT conversations — product cards, booking forms, maps, playlists — those are apps. This guide explains how to find them, use them, and get the most out of them.
What Are ChatGPT Apps?
Apps are third-party products that run directly inside ChatGPT. Instead of opening a separate website or downloading a mobile app, you interact with services through the conversation. You type what you need in natural language, and the app responds with both text and rich interactive interfaces.
The experience feels like having a personal assistant who can actually do things, not just talk about them. "Find me a direct flight to Berlin under €400 next Friday" isn't a hypothetical — ChatGPT calls a travel app, returns real results with prices and times, and lets you book right there.
Apps are built on two technologies: OpenAI's Apps SDK (which powers the interactive widgets you see in the chat) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data.
How to Find and Activate Apps
There are three ways apps show up in your conversations:
Mention by name. If you know an app exists, just reference it. "Spotify, make me a workout playlist" or "Use Expedia to find hotels in Lisbon" will trigger the relevant app directly.
Contextual suggestions. When you ask ChatGPT something that an app could help with, it may suggest one. Ask "what's a good restaurant near me?" and ChatGPT might offer to use a restaurant app to search for options. You'll see a prompt asking if you'd like to enable it.
The composer menu. Click the attachment or apps icon in the ChatGPT input field to browse available apps. This lets you explore what's available without knowing specific names.
When you use an app for the first time, ChatGPT will ask you to enable it and, if needed, authenticate with the service (for example, signing into your Spotify or Expedia account). You control which apps have access and can revoke permissions at any time.
What You Can Do With Apps
The range of apps is growing quickly. Here are the main categories and what you can expect:
Travel and booking. Search flights, compare hotel prices, check availability, and book — all conversational. Launch partners include Expedia and Booking.com. You describe what you want ("beachfront hotel in Barcelona, 4 nights, under €200/night") and the app returns matching results as interactive cards you can browse and book from.
Shopping. Search products, compare options, apply discount codes, and check out. Instead of browsing an e-commerce site, you describe what you need and the app finds it. "Running shoes, size 11, under $120, neutral cushioning" returns a curated set of options.
Productivity and design. Create presentations with Canva, generate design assets, or build documents. The app handles the visual work while you describe what you want in plain language.
Learning. Browse courses on platforms like Coursera, get personalized recommendations based on your goals, and enroll. "I want to learn Python for data science, beginner level, under 4 weeks" returns relevant courses.
Real estate. Search property listings on Zillow with natural language filters. "3-bedroom houses in Austin under $500k with a yard" returns listings with photos, prices, and details.
Entertainment. Build playlists on Spotify, get recommendations, and control playback. "Make me a 90-minute focus playlist with lo-fi and ambient electronic" creates a real playlist in your account.
Tips for Getting Better Results
ChatGPT Apps respond to natural language, but the quality of results depends on how you frame your requests.
Be specific with constraints. "Find me a hotel" gives you generic results. "Find me a pet-friendly hotel in central Amsterdam for March 14-17, under €150/night, with free cancellation" gives you exactly what you need.
Chain requests naturally. Apps support multi-step workflows. Start broad ("show me flights to Tokyo in April"), narrow down ("the morning departure on the 12th looks good — what hotels are near Shibuya?"), and take action ("book both"). The app maintains context across the conversation.
Ask for comparisons. "Compare the top 3 options by price and rating" works well with most apps. The interactive widgets are designed to display side-by-side comparisons.
Use follow-ups. If the first results aren't right, refine. "Those are too expensive — show me options under $80" or "I'd prefer something with better reviews." The app adjusts without starting over.
Privacy and Data
Apps only access your data when you explicitly enable them. Each app has its own privacy policy, and ChatGPT shows you what data the app will receive before you grant access.
You can manage your active apps in ChatGPT settings — enable, disable, or revoke access at any time. Apps can't access your conversation history beyond the current session unless you specifically authorize it.
When an app requires authentication (like signing into your Spotify account), the OAuth flow happens through a secure popup. Your credentials are never shared with ChatGPT itself — only with the third-party app service.
Availability
ChatGPT Apps launched on October 6, 2025, and are available to logged-in ChatGPT users. The initial rollout covers users outside the EEA, UK, and Switzerland, with broader availability expanding over time.
Both free and paid ChatGPT users can access apps, though some app features may require a subscription to the third-party service (for example, Spotify Premium features within the Spotify app).
What's Coming Next
OpenAI is building a searchable app directory — essentially an app store — where you'll be able to browse, discover, and rate apps. Developers will be able to submit their own apps, and OpenAI plans to introduce monetization options including paid apps with one-time purchases and usage-based pricing.
For developers and businesses, this is a new distribution channel. When a user asks ChatGPT for help with something your product does, your app can be the one that gets recommended. The key to maintaining that position: making your app reliable, fast, and useful — which requires analytics to measure what's actually happening.
For Developers: Building and Measuring Your App
If you're building a ChatGPT App, the user experience above is what you're designing for. Your app needs to handle natural language requests, return structured data that renders as interactive widgets, and maintain context across multi-turn conversations.
The challenge after launch is visibility. You can't see how users interact with your app inside ChatGPT. Which tools get called? Where do users drop off in a multi-step workflow? What errors are they hitting?
Yavio is an open-source analytics layer built for ChatGPT Apps and MCP Apps. It captures every tool call, widget interaction, and error — then gives you a dashboard with funnels, retention, and per-user breakdowns. If you're shipping a ChatGPT App, instrument it from day one.
Yavio is open source (MIT). Try Yavio Cloud free or self-host with Docker.