The ChatGPT iPhone app has just arrived in the UK – here’s how to get it

An iPhone screen showing the OpenAI ChatGPT download page on the App Store
(Image credit: Future)

ChatGPT recently made the big leap to the iPhone in the US and now it’s finally launched in more countries, including the UK.

You can download the free, official version of the AI chatbot right now from the App Store – either by following our guide on how to download ChatGPT on iPhone, or following this direct link to the ChatGPT iPhone app.

With dozens of third-party ChatGPT apps still clogging up the App Store, it’s actually quite difficult to find OpenAI’s official app using Apple’s search function. So we’d recommend following the direct link above to make sure you don’t land on one of the many knock-off apps.

You can use ChatGPT for a huge range of things, from writing letters to troubleshooting coding issues and writing song lyrics. And while the free version is built on the older GPT-3 model, it’s still very capable – and you can access the paid ChatGPT Plus and GPT-4 services from within the app.

That said, we’ve had issues getting the free version to respond to our prompts so far, with the app regularly timing out without answering our questions. It’s possible that this is simply because the free version is overloaded with demand, so it should hopefully work better in the coming days. 

What about Android?

Two iPhones on a blue background showing the official ChatGPT app

(Image credit: Future)

Despite the fact the ChatGPT iPhone app has now rolled out in 11 countries, there’s still no sign of an Android equivalent. That should change soon, with OpenAI promising in its previous blog post "Android users, you're next! ChatGPT will be coming to your devices soon."

That’s far from the only project OpenAI has been beavering away on too, with the company also recently announcing ‘Shared Links’. These let you share ChatGPT conversations with other people, who can then either copy it to their own chats to continue the thread themselves.

To do that you can just click on the thread you’re looking to share, select the ‘Share’ button, and click on ‘Copy Link’. We’re also expecting to see Bing integrated into ChatGPT soon, which will give it access to information that’s newer than what’s previously been available in GPT-3 (whose training cut-off was September 2021).

That feature isn’t yet available in the free version of ChatGPT (either on desktop or iPhone), but Microsoft has said it’s coming “soon” after it’s been rolled out on ChatGPT Plus via a plugin. 

With Google Bard also rapidly improving its skill set with new features like image generation (which is powered by Adobe Firefly) plus new coding powers, the AI chatbot wars are clearly still just getting started.

Mark Wilson
Senior news editor

Mark is TechRadar's Senior news editor. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at both TechRadar and Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine. As a freelancer, he's contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph's Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London's Square Mile.