ChatGPT iPhone: New Long-Press Shortcut for Recent Photos

ChatGPT's iPhone app now has a new shortcut for recent photos. Users can press and hold the plus button next to the prompt to quickly select a photo. This change was noted in the August 21, 2026 release notes. What's interesting is that this feature requires photo access to be enabled. While the old method of tapping the plus button and navigating through the photo library still works for older images, this new long-press option is designed for faster access to recently taken pictures. OpenAI's consumer product lead, Adam Fry, described it as a power-user shortcut. Other updates in the same release include clearer connection-status messages and improved time awareness for location-sensitive questions. This update is specifically for the ChatGPT iOS app, and Android users received different updates, such as full-width generated images and more recent chats in the sidebar. This new shortcut aims to make it quicker to use recent photos with ChatGPT for common tasks.