ChatGPT: OpenAI is preparing a major overhaul of its desktop app

In July, OpenAI replaced its desktop app with a brand-new version bringing together ChatGPT, Work, and Codex in a single window, and renamed the old version ChatGPT Classic. The homepage became a fiasco, to the point that Greg Brockman, the company’s co-founder, eventually described the interface himself as “a little bit of a mess”.Four months later, the cleanup begins: the original app has just received its retirement date.

Read also: ChatGPT Pro: amid the controversy, OpenAI backs down on reducing the subscription

What will happen to the loyal users of the original app?

A banner that appeared in ChatGPT Classic makes things clear: the app will be retired on January 30, 2027. The complete conversation history will automatically migrate to the new app, and nothing suggests that a reprieve is on the agenda. On OpenAI’s forums, users are already begging the company to reconsider its decision.

Recent models rely on features exclusive to the new app, such as the reasoning effort setting. The old version is therefore becoming less and less reliable as the service evolves. OpenAI had, in fact, barely touched it since the summer. The diehards who stayed on Classic precisely to escape the July redesign, and its transition from a native app to a heavier Electron-based version, will therefore have to accept it. Their refuge will have lasted barely seven months after the redesign it was meant to spare them from.

One redesign can hide another

In July, the redesigned version brought three products under one roof, at the cost of back-and-forth switching that many subscribers did not understand.OpenAI had already backtracked once, reintroducing a direct switch between the Chat and Work tabs, along with a sidebar to access Codex. In the coming weeks, the company will go further and will test with a small group an interface where the two tabs have become one.

Greg Brockman was hoping to see the Work tab disappear by the end of the year, and the move looks very much like it. On its side, Codex will remain a separate experience, though it is expected to share a common usage shell with ChatGPT, allowing both chatting and coding to draw from a single quota. Back in October, the Atlas browser was scrapped a year after its launch, with ChatGPT preferring to install itself directly in Google Chrome. On February 13, GPT-4o and three other models were removed despite the subscribers’ uproar, having already secured a first reprieve six months earlier. With every cut, the company makes the same promise: to simplify the lineup.

For those who have been with it from the outset, the countdown reads a little under three months, and the migration will require no action regarding existing history. Habits, however, will not adjust so easily: the interface they had fled will become the only one available, just as it is still changing. By dint of simplifying, OpenAI has at least managed to achieve one thing: making simplicity a permanent work in progress.

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Source: 9to5mac