Why Canvas is ChatGPT’s best productivity feature for power users

OpenAI is constantly adding new features to ChatGPT to make it more functional for everyday needs. The Canvas feature was unveiled last October and has transformed my ChatGPT workflow — and the best part is that it keeps getting better. 

Canvas is a separate interface that makes collaborating on your writing and coding projects easier with ChatGPT. 

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Canvas is available to all web users in GPT-4o, regardless of plan. As of this week, Canvas is also available with o1, OpenAI’s model that excels at reasoning, making it even a better assistant for coders. However, to access the tool in o1, you need a ChatGPT Plus plan. 

If you use ChatGPT as a co-editor in any capacity, you will never again use ChatGPT without this feature. Don’t believe me? The concept is best understood visually, so stick with me. Here’s how Canvas works.

The interface

To get started, just let ChatGPT know you would like to use Canvas to answer your query by selecting the toolbox at the bottom of the search box and clicking “Canvas”. You can also call on the tool in your prompt by typing “/canvas”. Once Canvas appears on the textbox, follow it with your usual prompt. 

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For my example walk-through, I used the lyrics to Happy Birthday since I don’t use AI tools to edit or write my ZDNET articles in any capacity. I copied and pasted the text into the textbox with the prompt: “Can you help me edit this piece?” 

As you can see below, instead of just outputting a revised version below the initial prompt, ChatGPT with Canvas automatically opened a new interface. My edited project was placed on the right side of the screen, while my initial prompt was on the left, with a textbox available to ask additional questions. 

With this interface, no matter how many questions you ask or how many edits are made, your project will always remain in the same spot on the right, giving you easy visibility as to what the text looks like after each edit and how it fares next to the original.

So, what makes the Canvas interface a game-changer? Typically, when you ask ChatGPT to revise the text, the AI outputs the new version as the next message, making it difficult to compare the original and edited piece side-by-side and keep track of the changes.

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For example, with the regular interface, if you ask something like, ‘Can you revise this cover letter?’ and then follow up by asking to revise one specific paragraph, ChatGPT may just output the new paragraph, forcing you to go back and forth to piece both generations together. This approach is inconvenient, especially if you switch between both versions and there is lots of dialogue in between. 

The new interface is helpful if you use it for a coding task and want to keep track of the changes. Canvas also lets you run Python code directly in Canvas, allowing ChatGPT to execute coding tasks such as fixing bugs.

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Although ChatGPT has advanced writing skills, it’s still an AI prone to hallucinations, so it’s useful to double-check edits. Keeping track of the edits is also useful because it helps you learn from the changes and possibly implement them next time. This approach also prevents you from having to scroll up and down continuously through your conversation to find suggestions and edits. 

The shortcuts 

Another game-changing element of the Canvas feature is the new shortcuts feature. On the page where your project lives, a button in the lower-right corner — represented by a pencil — includes four one-click shortcuts that can transform your project. 

The writing shortcuts help users adjust lengths, change reading levels, add emojis, and “add final polish”, which checks for grammar, clarity, and consistency. The coding shortcuts can review code, add logs, add comments, fix bugs, and port to a language. The buttons are a quick and efficient way to implement your changes without text prompts. 

Here’s another convenient tool (and my personal favorite): you can highlight portions of your project for specific changes. All you need to do is highlight lines of your text or code, and another set of shortcuts will appear. 

This time, Canvas allows you to change the formatting with options such as bold or italicize, and directly asks ChatGPT for help with that specific section. 

Once the edit on that section is complete, the changes will be reflected in the larger project, keeping the rest of the text intact and only altering the areas requested by the user. It’s satisfying to see one portion of your living project change. This approach can be useful for resumes, cover letters, or other job application materials. 

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What about the quality of the edits? Because Canvas uses GPT-4o the edits are valuable and improve the overall quality of the text. If you ask for a general edit, Canvas will check grammar and spelling (as Grammarly does), and syntax.

My favorite way to use the feature, which I’ve defaulted to almost every day since it launched, is for polishing personal email correspondence. Sometimes, getting the words out perfectly is difficult, especially when sending cold emails. So, I drop my draft into ChatGPT (with GPT-4o Canvas activated) and ask the tool to polish my text.

Depending on the results, I will go to the right-hand side of the page and either add in-line text myself, and then ask ChatGPT to polish the email, or highlight a part I don’t like and use the shortcut to specify how I want that area changed.