A single accidental deletion can permanently remove weeks or even months of conversations. If the information wasn’t saved elsewhere or stored in Memory, it is effectively lost to the user.
The User would want to restore the chat.
Proposed Solution
After a user confirms that they want to delete a chat:
- The chat is immediately removed from the chat history.
- A small notification appears on the Home screen saying “Restore Deleted Chat” with a Restore button.
- This notification remains available for a limited period (for example, 30 minutes, though OpenAI can choose the duration).
- If the user clicks Restore within that period:
- the chat is restored with all messages, attachments, and conversation history intact;
- it returns to its original position in the chat history;
- it functions exactly as before.
- If the user does not restore it before the time expires:
- the notification disappears;
- the chat can no longer be restored by the user;
- OpenAI may continue processing the deleted chat according to its existing deletion policy.
Benefits
- Prevents accidental loss of valuable conversations.
- Gives users peace of mind when managing their chats.
- Requires only a short recovery window rather than indefinite storage.
- Does not necessarily require changing OpenAI’s existing deletion policy.
Optional Alternative
If restoring the original conversation with all the messages intact and in order is technically difficult, an alternative would be to restore the chat as a summary containing all the important informations from the deleted conversation. This is not as useful as restoring the full chat, but it is far better than losing everything.