OpenAI fixes ChatGPT desktop's missing sidebar history
By Steven Van ·
An update restores chat and project history, syncs Chat and Work across devices, and eases mode switching on macOS and Windows.
OpenAI shipped a round of fixes to the new ChatGPT desktop app, and the announcement came with unusual candor: the team admitted it didn't get the redesign totally right on the first try. The changes, described by OpenAI's Thibault Sottiaux, restore the things users missed most and smooth over the app's split personality between Chat, Work, and Codex.
What changed
Three fixes lead the update. Conversation history and projects are visible in the sidebar again, the loudest complaint about the redesign. Chat and Work history now sync across web, mobile, and desktop, so a thread started on your phone is waiting on your Mac, while local tasks deliberately stay on your computer. And switching between Chat and Work modes on desktop is now easy and consistent with how it appears on web and mobile. Codex mode is untouched: in the announcement's words, still the OG and best at what it does.
Work mode grows into a document suite
The update lands alongside a push to make Work mode genuinely useful: ChatGPT Work now creates and edits polished docs, spreadsheets, and slides, walked through in an official tutorial the day before. Combined with the desktop app's computer use and built-in browser, the app is converging on a shape, Chat for thinking, Work for producing documents, Codex for code, with your context (email, screenshots, files, anything on screen) available to all three.
Search caught an upgrade too
The fixes cap a week of app-experience work: two days earlier, ChatGPT's search got faster and more powerful. From the sidebar you can now search chats, projects, images, and documents in one place, across web, iOS, and Android, with filters to narrow results and one tap to open anything directly. For heavy users, whose ChatGPT history has quietly become a personal knowledge base, findability is as important as any new capability.
Why the quick correction matters
Desktop apps are where AI assistants become ambient rather than occasional, and the friction bar is much lower than on the web: if the app loses your history or buries a mode, you feel it dozens of times a day. OpenAI shipping visible fixes within days, and saying keep the feedback coming, suggests the desktop surface is being treated as a first-class product now, not a wrapper. For anyone who bounced off the redesign, this update is the signal to give it another try.
Get it
The updated app is available at chatgpt.com/download for macOS and Windows, with a Chrome extension alongside. Existing Codex app users can update to ChatGPT and open Codex from inside it.
Sources: Thibault Sottiaux on X, ChatGPT on X, OpenAI.