How to Keep ChatGPT or Claude Open While Working Fullscreen on Mac
Working fullscreen and needing an AI chat at the same time is an awkward combination on macOS. The document, the IDE, the spreadsheet — whatever you're in takes the whole screen, and the chat lives in a browser tab on the other side of a Space switch. Every question costs you the context you were holding.
There are four reasonable ways to handle this. They differ mostly in how many things you need open at once.
1. The official desktop apps
Both ChatGPT and Claude ship macOS apps, and if a single AI chat is all you need beside your work, start here. They're free, and a native app window behaves better than a browser tab: you can summon it with a keyboard shortcut and it doesn't get lost among thirty other tabs.
Check the current shortcut and window options in each app's own settings rather than trusting a blog post; these apps change often, and what's true this month may not be next month.
The limit is scope. One official app gives you that one assistant. If your actual pattern is "AI, plus the docs I am asking about, plus the dashboard I am checking against", you're back to switching — just with one fewer switch than before.
2. A second display
If you have one, this is the least clever and most effective answer. Main task fullscreen on the laptop screen, chat parked on the external display. No software, no shortcuts, nothing to configure.
Two caveats. It doesn't travel, so your workflow changes shape whenever you're away from the desk. And a fullscreen app on one display can still pull focus in ways that make the second screen feel further away than it looks.
3. Split View
macOS can tile two apps into one fullscreen Space. Put your editor on the left, the browser with the chat on the right.
This works, and it's built in. What people find after a while is that it's a commitment rather than a convenience: both apps are locked into that arrangement, the proportions are fiddly to change, and getting out means dismantling the Space. It fits "I will be doing these two things for the next hour". It fits badly when you need the chat for ninety seconds every ten minutes.
There's also a hard limit at two. The moment a third thing is involved, Split View is out.
4. A summonable layer above the fullscreen app
The last option is to stop thinking of the chat as a window you arrange, and treat it as something you call up and dismiss. Press a shortcut and the panel appears over whatever you're in, fullscreen apps included. You ask, you read, you press the shortcut again and it's gone. The main task never loses focus for longer than you were actually looking away.
This is the category Overlay is in. Because the panel holds tabs rather than one page, the same layer can carry ChatGPT, Claude, the docs you're asking about and a dashboard at once, arranged side by side, and isolated sessions let you stay signed into more than one account on the same site. It's a paid tool with a 30-day trial, and it only handles web pages — a native app window isn't something it can bring along.
If your honest answer to "what do I need beside my work" is "ChatGPT, and that's it", option 1 is free and you should use it. This category earns its place when the list has three or four things on it and you keep returning to all of them.
Picking
| Your situation | Use |
|---|---|
| One AI chat, nothing else | The official ChatGPT or Claude app |
| You have an external display | Put the chat there |
| Two apps, settled task, long session | Split View |
| Several web things you return to all day, over a fullscreen app | A summonable web workspace |
The problem is rarely "I need ChatGPT visible". It's usually "I need four web things visible and I keep paying a Space switch for each one". Where you sit on that line decides which option fits, and for a lot of people the free one is correct.
Why it's awkward in the first place
Briefly, because it explains why some tools fail at this and others don't.
When a macOS app goes fullscreen, it moves into its own Space — effectively a private virtual desktop. A window you left behind isn't hidden or lowered; it's on a different Space, and you've navigated away from it. This is why "always on top" utilities that only raise a window's level stop working the moment you go fullscreen, and why the fix is a tool that joins all Spaces rather than one that sorts windows.
The same mechanism explains why pinning a native app window behaves differently from a web panel, which is worth knowing before you try to solve this with an always-on-top utility.