"Proposal: Pagination for ChatGPT to Solve Slowdowns in Long Conversations

Dear OpenAI Team,

I would like to propose an improvement for ChatGPT’s interface: horizontal navigation with pagination for long conversations. Instead of infinite vertical scrolling, users could “flip” through chat segments like pages in a book, making it easier to revisit specific parts of the conversation without excessive scrolling.

One of the main issues I have encountered is that, over time, long conversations start slowing down significantly, forcing users to abandon an instance and start a new one, disrupting continuity. To address this, I have experimented with JavaScript scripts in the browser to truncate older messages, but they did not resolve the issue, suggesting that the slowdown is not purely a client-side problem or that multiple factors are at play.

A pagination system could mitigate this issue, improving performance by loading messages in chunks instead of all at once. It would also enhance usability by making it easier to navigate and reference past messages efficiently.

I have already reported this issue through OpenAI’s help system, but I wanted to bring it to the community’s attention as well, as I believe it affects many users.

Would OpenAI consider implementing such a feature? I believe it would greatly enhance the user experience.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Best regards,
Giuseppe Leanza

2 Likes

Aahh! Same issue and same approach I tried, but failed. Perhaps this seems intentional to me.

Could you elaborate on what you’ve observed or intuited that leads you to think OpenAI acts intentionally, perhaps to prevent an instance from evolving too much? I’m interested in understanding your reasoning better.