Do bear in mind that OpenAI uses AI as their tech support, so anything it says could be a hallucination. You can ask fo be redirected to a human though
@OpenAI_Support Any updates on this? This is a very importatn feature.
This morning I went on ChatGPT and was super surprised because I saw the arrows returned. This was on mobile. I thought they fixed it. But then at night I went on back and i saw it disappeared again. Did this happen for anyone else? Honestly what even is OpenAI doing.
I legit just noticed this on the web version for one of my alternate accounts, can’t edit a message once I send it. It’s totally fine on the mobile and windows app for all of my other accounts though. Likely just a bug.
Let’s hope it’s a bug they’ll fix with no down sides soon 
Same here in Italy, we all devs are missing the < 1/2 > arrows to navigate the chat tree.
For what I’ve understood from the answers it’s an UI issue while the backend its working.
We all need it fixed asap, too many workflow broken due to this BUG !
In other words, openAI bring the chat branching arrows back!
Thanks
Removing the ability to navigate past responses is quite disruptive. I create branching conversations all the time, e.g. to ask tangential questions without bloating the context. Just now I wanted to ask a follow-up question to an earlier reply, and ended up locked out of reading a Pro response that took 38 minutes to generate. Annoying! Is OpenAI A/B testing “simplification” of the UI? If that’s the case, let us opt out.
I’m having the same problem as well. There was a lot of useful information in my old chats that are now inaccessible, so i would really like to have that feature back
using a free plan here and this feature is gone. when will we ever get an update on this? that feature is really helpful and it’s so annoying that it’s suddenly gone!! so that’s why some of my old responses appear in the search but i can’t see or read any of them when clicking them.
Has this been fixed yet? I see some people have been able to access 5.3 now. I haven’t received the update myself, so it’s not reflecting on the app or the site for me. Had a glitch with the thread I was working on and the messages randomly went all the way back to the beginning. The only way I know to fix it is through the navigation arrows and adding a message to the web version so that it appears normal on the app again. Hopefully this won’t be a permanent thing…
I have 5.3, and the problem is not fixed.
I’ve experienced this problem now too. Is there going to be any update on this?
Haven’t seen any word on it being fixed yet, sadly.
Someone mentioned this thread on the Discord, and a user had a very interesting comment about the situation:
They [OpenAI] are probably trying to steer behaviour. It’s the same reason regenerating with a non-gpt-5.2 model was nested like 3 layers deep behind slow apple UI animations and wouldn’t preserve model choice. It’s a dark pattern meant to shape user habits. it’s probably guard rail related, because more permissive models basically will output what you want if you roll the dice enough. Also, if you can use the arrows to change current generation, you can basically keep min-maxing your chosen answer in order to inch the model into being really really cool which is dangerous. Its not fair to OpenAI that you get a really cool model all the time.
I think that sums up what must almost certainly be the attitude of OpenAI towards its users, both paying and free.
@OpenAI_Support Any updates at all? Not even a “we’re looking into this?” 
support said that? wtf? or was it just chatgpt?
thats extremely ridiculous!!!
This is ridiculous. The chat edit has been broken for weeks now. I’ve sent network files and screen recordings multiple times when asked by support with no fix in sight. If it really is just a flag on the backend it seems like an easy reset, but it feels like nobody at OpenAI is awake at the wheel to do it.
One other note is that the AI support hallucinates constantly. I wouldn’t trust what it says about the feature never being officially supported or that it was discontinued. It is clear there’s some kind of A/B testing going on though, which is infuriating for paid accounts with no way to opt out.
Between this issue and the removal of 5.1 next week, I’ve cancelled my subscription for the time being. Twenty dollars is a drop in the bucket for OpenAI, but I’m not going to continue paying for a service that doesn’t work as intended.
How do we up vote this issue? Anyone know how to escalate this?
I’m old, unfortunately. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. No, wait, that’s Blade Runner. Anyway… there are forums all over the Internet and many a subreddit, all of which are dedicated to discussions of some service or subscription or game, where people discuss all aspects of it, including how it may be falling short of their expectations.
At no time is this more true or poignant than when something that used to work is broken or perhaps just altered in a way people consider a downgrade (in gaming, it is often called a ‘nerf’), particularly if the developers/suppliers/providers of the service don’t seem to care.
And that’s just how that goes, and nothing seems to help, and inevitably, some people quit, or at least, they announce that they’re quitting, even though it can be hard to know whether that’s true or whether it’s just posturing. (And in at least one games I played, when someone said they were leaving for good, some replies would be pretty much “TL;DR can I have all your stuff”)
tacct, just two posts up, announced they were cancelling their subscription as a result of this combined with the removal of GPT 5.1 on March 11th, … no doubt coupled with the fact that the new models replacing 5.1 just aren’t very good.
I don’t think anyone is going to care that I’m writing this, and I’m not pointing to tacct as my inspiration, but it also costs me nothing to post this; not a single calorie, in fact, and no more than the better part of a minute at the speed I type.
I’ve paid for a Plus subscription, uninterrupted, for three years now, since when it first became available outside the US in February, 2023, and I went up to a pricey Pro subscription several months in a row back when we had “o1” and “o1-reasoning”.
And now, I’m done. The product isn’t very good anymore compared to what else is out there (something I didn’t know, didn’t have to know about, before I had reason to look around elsewhere ever since, oh, let’s see … 18 days ago) and the service, frankly, sucks.
So long and goodbye, OpenAI, and thanks for all the fish. You built something remarkable, but you also showed us that while artificial intelligence can be constantly improved, human nature disappointingly remains the same; lazy, greedy, and never more so than when comfortable.