I use the Windows ChatGPT desktop app to manage complex, long-running work involving many projects and task-specific chats. Custom sidebar sections are useful, but the current implementation has three major limitations.
1. Projects and sections are visually difficult to distinguish
Projects, custom sections, and the pinned area use very similar typography, colors, indentation, and chevrons. When the sidebar contains many items, it is difficult to understand the hierarchy at a glance.
Projects, sections, chats, and pinned items should have distinct icons and clearer visual styling. Stronger indentation, background highlighting, or hierarchy guides would also improve readability.
2. Sections cannot be nested
Custom sections currently support only a single level. A section cannot contain another section, so users cannot build a directory-like hierarchy such as:
Main Category → Subcategory → Project
This becomes limiting when managing many related projects or long-running areas of work.
3. Sections do not sync across devices
Sections created in the Windows desktop app do not appear when signing in to ChatGPT on another computer. The projects and chats are available, but their section names, ordering, and organization are missing.
This makes custom sections unreliable as a long-term organizational system because the same account has a different sidebar structure on different devices.
Suggested improvements
Please consider making custom sections part of the cloud-synced account or project data model and adding:
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Cross-device synchronization of section names, ordering, and project membership
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Nested sections and sub-sections
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Distinct icons for projects, sections, chats, and pinned items
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Clearer indentation, background highlighting, and hierarchy guides
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Consistent organization across the Windows desktop app, web, and other supported clients
Custom sections should function as a persistent, cloud-synced organizational system rather than a device-specific sidebar view.