Make your LLMs ready to hand

If you want to use LLMs more often, put them within easy reach. When you're working, they should be less than one second away.

On your smartphone

Easy: add the apps to your home screen.

On your MacBook

I'll describe a couple of different methods. Overview:

I strongly recommend taking the time to set up one or both of the "dedicated browser" and "terminal helper" methods.¹

Method 1: Browser shortcuts

In your web browser, type Command + T to open a new tab. Type "cl" or "ch" and press enter.

If that doesn't work, go to chatgpt.com and claude.ai, and add them to your bookmarks (Command + D).

Rating: 2/5 stars—it's too slow. Several keystrokes are requried, and you have to wait for the app to load. It's also hard to find that tab again, if you're switching between the LLM and other tabs.

Method 2: Desktop apps

Download the desktop app for ChatGPT or Claude.

With ChatGPT installed, you can access it by pressing Option + Spacebar.

With Claude, open "Settings" and set the shortcut to Control + Spacebar. (N.B. Not the Command key).

Rating: 2/5 stars. The desktop apps have some major limitations. Critically: in ChatGPT you can't attach Google Docs. In both, you can't easily switch between multiple parallel conversations. This method doesn't give you easy access to Gemini and Grok. And you can't use BetterChat.

Method 3: Dedicated browser

1. Download a web browser you don't use by default (e.g. Edge or Brave).²
2. Open that browser and disable the annoying default features (e.g. AI chat sidebar, crypto stuff, news articles on the new tab screen).
3. Add ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok to the bookmarks toolbar.
4. Configure a keyboard shortcut to switch to that browser.³

Rating: 4/5 stars. Setup is a faff, but it's great once done.

Method 4: Terminal helper

If you use Claude Code, install my Ask Many Models skill. Say "ask many models: [your question]" or run amm from the terminal. It queries GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok in parallel, then synthesises the results into a single document.

Rating: 5/5 stars. Setup is a faff, but it's then very easy to query many models at once and get an automatic synthesis of their replies.

Method 5: Raycast AI

Raycast has a built-in AI chat that supports 30+ models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, and others. Access it via hotkey from anywhere on your Mac.

Rating: 3/5 stars. Quick setup and easy to use. But the responses aren't formatted as well as when you use the native apps (method 3), and you can't easily query several models at once (method 4).

How to prompt many models at once

Often, it makes sense to ask many models. Try Tile for that, or use the terminal helper above.

Appendix 1. Keyboard shortcuts within ChatGPT and Claude

I've made a tool for that: BetterChat.