ChatGPT Mobile Gets a Codex Shortcut — Release Notes March 26
OpenAI's push to make Codex a household name just got a lot more literal. Today's ChatGPT mobile update adds Codex as a first-class shortcut in the app's sidebar quick-launch bar — sitting alongside Images, Pulse, and Apps — rolling out now on iOS and web, with Android following soon. For a coding agent that launched as a power-user tool buried in menus, landing on the mobile homescreen of ChatGPT's 400 million users is a genuinely significant distribution moment.
The March 26th release notes include a few other quality-of-life additions worth noting. Users can now optionally share device location for more contextually grounded responses, and Plus, Pro, and Business subscribers will see large pastes — anything over 5,000 characters — automatically converted into file attachments rather than dropped raw into the context window. The legacy deep research mode was also officially retired today, folded into the unified deep research experience that's been the default for some time.
The Codex shortcut change is the real signal here, though. OpenAI is heading into its IPO stretch run with Codex explicitly positioned as one of three core product pillars alongside ChatGPT and the Atlas browser. Getting it in front of hundreds of millions of mobile users — not just developers — is exactly the kind of distribution bet that shapes where the product goes next.