I’ve looked through existing discussions to see if anyone else has reported this, but I couldn’t find anything that exactly matches what I’m experiencing.
Here’s the issue:
When I use the search bar at the top left to find a message in one of my chats, I do get relevant search results. But when I click on a result, I’m taken to the bottom of the chat — not to the actual location of the message I searched for.
In long chats with hundreds or thousands of messages, this makes the search function nearly unusable. It would be a major improvement if clicking a search result would take me directly to that message’s position in the conversation, or at least highlight it clearly.
Thanks for reading – I hope this can be improved in a future update!
Did u get this working, I have the same issue and below is the reply I got from the OpenAI support / chat.
Thank you for sharing this feedback! I understand how frustrating it can be when searching through long conversations—being brought to the bottom of the chat instead of directly to the searched message makes it hard to find what you need. Right now, the search function in ChatGPT shows you results, but clicking them does not always jump directly to the message’s location within the conversation. This is a known limitation, especially noticeable in longer chats. Many users have requested improvements like auto-scrolling to or highlighting the result in context. While I can’t make product changes myself, I recommend keeping your app up to date, as improvements are always being worked on. Your suggestion is valuable and matches feedback OpenAI has heard from others. Is there anything else you’d like help with regarding chat search or navigating large conversations?
I’ve run into this too. Was rereading an old chat, and even though I know there’s a ton more there, it doesn’t take me to what I’m searching for in my chat.
It’s quite crazy how such a basic and needed feature is still not implemented. It’s still a nightmare to find a previous response that is buried somewhere within a conversation.
Hey @TarablyM, yeah I hear you. What you’re seeing is actually how chat search works right now. It’ll show matching results, but it doesn’t auto-jump or highlight the exact message inside long conversations. So it’s not a bug, just a limitation at the moment. Totally agree it makes digging through older chats more painful than it should be.
One thing that can help a bit is just asking directly in that same chat something like, “Can you list everywhere we talked about <keyword>?” The model can usually pull those sections together faster than manually scrolling around.
I’ll make sure this gets logged as feedback since better in-chat navigation comes up pretty often.
When do you think we’ll get better in chat navigation? Like even just a basic sidebar that allows you to quickly jump between your own queries inside the same thread? I’ve been a power user with a subscription for well over a year now and the astonishing lack of UX improvement has got me on the verge of leaving.
