Feature Request: Improved Chat, Project and Navigation Organisation

ChatGPT Feature requests
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Feature Request: Improved Chat, Project and Navigation Organisation

I use ChatGPT extensively for long-running research and now have a large number of projects and conversations. As the amount of material grows, I am finding that the current interface makes it increasingly difficult to organise, identify and navigate both chats and projects.

I would like to suggest the following improvements:

1. Resizable sidebar

Allow users to drag the edge of the sidebar to make it wider or narrower.

I deliberately use descriptive chat and project titles, but these are frequently truncated. A wider sidebar would make similarly named research conversations much easier to distinguish.

2. Show full titles on hover

Where a chat or project title has been truncated, hovering over it should display the complete title in a tooltip.

3. Chat sorting options

Provide options to sort chats alphabetically A-Z or Z-A, as well as chronologically.

For users who adopt consistent naming conventions, alphabetical sorting effectively turns chat titles into a useful filing and retrieval system.

4. Manual ordering of pinned chats

Allow pinned chats to be dragged into a user-defined order rather than having their position determined automatically.

5. Manual ordering of pinned projects

Similarly, allow pinned projects to be dragged into whatever order the user finds most useful.

6. Project sub-folders or groups

Allow Projects to be organised into user-created folders or groups.

For example, a user undertaking extensive historical research might have a Genealogy group containing projects for individual families, locations, research topics, sources and software/workflow discussions.

A flat list of Projects eventually creates the same organisational problem that Projects themselves were intended to solve for chats.

7. Manual ordering of project folders and projects

Project folders or groups should themselves be manually sortable, with the projects contained within them also capable of being arranged in a user-defined order.

8. Better organisation of chats within Projects

Chats within a Project should support alphabetical, chronological and manual sorting, together with the ability to pin particularly important conversations within that Project.

9. Jump to top and bottom of long conversations

Long conversations can become extremely lengthy, and there is currently no obvious convenient way to return immediately to the beginning.

Please add easily accessible Jump to Top and Jump to Bottom controls for long conversations. Ideally these would remain accessible while scrolling.

Some form of position indicator or improved scrollbar navigation for exceptionally long chats would also be useful.

10. Persistent display of the current chat title

The title of the conversation currently being viewed should remain visible in a fixed header at the top of the chat window.

When working some distance down a very long conversation, particularly when several conversations concern similar subjects, it is surprisingly easy to lose track of exactly which chat is open.

The persistent title could also provide convenient access to common actions such as Rename, Move to Project and Pin.

Why this matters

ChatGPT is increasingly useful not simply for individual questions, but as a long-term research and working environment. Users who work this way can accumulate hundreds or thousands of conversations, many of which may themselves become very long.

The current interface works reasonably well with a relatively small number of conversations, but becomes increasingly cumbersome as a user’s archive grows.

I have reached the point where I bookmark important ChatGPT conversations in my web browser and organise those bookmarks into folders because this gives me better hierarchical organisation and navigation than ChatGPT’s own conversation interface.

ChatGPT has become an important research tool for me, but I feel that the sidebar, Projects and long-chat navigation have not kept pace with the way long-term users now use the product.

A relatively small set of improvements to sorting, manual ordering, folders, title visibility and navigation would make a very substantial difference to users who rely on ChatGPT for ongoing research and project work.

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Thanks for laying this out so clearly, @bluesplayer43. The requests around sidebar sizing, sorting and manual ordering, project groups or subfolders, better in-project organisation, and persistent chat titles are noted.

One item is already supported: truncated chat and project titles reveal the full title when you hover over them.

For item 9, could you clarify whether you mean jumping to the start or end of the entire conversation, or of a single long response? On desktop, the Home and End keys can already be used to jump to the top or bottom of the conversation.

I’ll wait for your clarification on item 9 so I’ll send the request all at once.

-Mark G.

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Thanks Mark.

A couple of clarifications:

Chat/project titles

I am aware that hovering over a truncated chat or project title scrolls the full title, and that is useful for identifying it.

However, it doesn’t really solve the problem when renaming a chat with a long, descriptive title. The rename field is constrained by the width of the sidebar, so only a small part of a longer title is visible while editing it. This makes reviewing and editing longer titles unnecessarily awkward.

Perhaps selecting Rename could open a small pop-out editing box showing the complete title, rather than editing it within the narrow sidebar. That would allow the whole title, or at least substantially more of it, to be seen while it is being edited.

Item 9: Jump to top of conversation

I mean jumping to the start or end of the entire conversation, particularly in very long chats.

I’ve tried the keyboard options you mentioned in Chrome. Home and End do not take me to the beginning or end of the conversation. Ctrl+Home works to some extent, but in a very long chat it only jumps to the top of the section currently loaded. ChatGPT then loads an earlier section of the conversation, after which I have to press Ctrl+Home again. This can need to be repeated several times to reach the actual start of a long conversation.

So I think a genuine “Jump to top of conversation” function is still needed, which would take the user directly to the beginning regardless of how much of the conversation is currently loaded.

One possible implementation would be to make use of the existing circular down-arrow button. For example, holding Shift could reverse its function, with the button changing to an up-arrow while Shift is held. Shift + click could then jump directly to the beginning of the conversation.

The important point is that it should jump to the actual beginning of the conversation, rather than just the beginning of the currently loaded section.

Thanks,
John

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Thanks for the clarification, @bluesplayer43, and for taking the time to share this feature request together with the clarifications provided. We’ll pass it along to the team for logging and consideration.

We appreciate and value your feedback. While we can’t promise implementation or provide a timeline, we’re grateful you shared it with us. We’ll close this topic while keeping it visible for reference.

-Mark G.