ChatGPT's Mac app keeps an unencrypted log of what you do on your computer

A ChatGPT user opened a hidden folder on his Mac and found a diary of everything he had done, in ten-minute chapters.

The feature behind the folder

The folder is ~/.codex/memories/extensions/skysight, and the feature behind it is Computer History, which OpenAI shipped in the ChatGPT desktop app for macOS on August 13, 2026. It is opt-in and off by default for the Pro, Business and Enterprise plans that have it. When on, it captures “clicks, typing, keyboard shortcuts, app switches” plus context from the macOS accessibility system, and periodically writes plain-text summaries so a user can say “help me with the doc I just had open.”

A r/OpenAI post on September 1 described what those summaries look like: lines such as “User went to Safari and went to…”, in roughly ten-minute increments, logged whenever the app was open.

What the documentation says

OpenAI’s own documentation adds the details that matter. The raw event files are kept locally for up to 48 hours. To turn them into memories, OpenAI “processes temporary event files on its servers,” then deletes them “unless required by law” and does not use them for training. And the memory files “are not encrypted by Computer History, and other programs running as your macOS user may be able to access them.”

Half right

The user’s alarm is half right. The data does leave the machine for processing, even with model training switched off, because that toggle governs training, not processing. And the log on disk is readable by any app running as the same user. None of it is secret; it is a feature a person switches on. The point is knowing what was switched on, and what the files on disk contain.