I would like to suggest the addition of a “Trash Bin” feature in ChatGPT to manage deleted chats and projects. This feature would allow users to recover chats or projects they may have accidentally deleted, by temporarily storing them in a trash bin before permanent deletion.
Having a dedicated trash bin would ensure that important data, such as discussions, drafts, or ongoing projects, is not lost due to accidental deletion. It would provide a safety net and make data management more user-friendly and secure.
Thank you for considering this suggestion. I believe it would greatly improve the overall user experience and provide peace of mind for users handling sensitive or important information.
This is a must. I just deleted a project with two months of prompts, on a brief moment of distraction, when I thought I was deleting a conversation. Irreparable loss of information in a blink of an eye. A recycle bin would have prevented this.
I agree. Particularly considering that the delete option is right next to the archive option in the menu on the mobile app, it is very easy to accidentally delete a chat when going to reference some generated content from the archive of the chat. It happened to me just now and I was checking for an undelete option when I saw this chat!
The good thing is I do not use AI to generate content for me; I use it to help me bring out the content I want to generate. So in that , me being intact, nothing is truly lost.
F&#@- Openai! They made the dumbest ux in history. Moving a chat to a project will glitch and create 2 or 3 duplicate projects with the same chat in it. Then if you delete one project, it deletes the chat from ALL those projects. F^^@ you guys！WHY WOULD YOU MAKE SUCH A SHF DESIGN WHEN YOU HAVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS?No way to restore a deleted chat!!!??? A basic feature! Completely a**hole design! You will not get ANY MORE money from me until this anticustomer UX is fixed.
I’m here to add to the conversation about the unbelievably terrible user experience following an accidental project deletion. I just accidentally deleted a project in my ChatGPT account that contained months of work (40+ hours invested). To my surprise, there was no confirmation prompt, no trash bin, and no recovery option. The project was instantly and permanently gone.
For a platform designed for deep work and long-form content, this is unacceptable. Every productivity tool — from Google Docs to Notion — provides at least a basic safeguard:
A “Are you sure you want to delete?” confirmation,
Or a temporary recovery option (trash/archive with a 7–30 day restore window).
Without these, users risk losing enormous amounts of invested time with a single misclick.
Please escalate this to your product team. At minimum, ChatGPT projects should include:
A confirmation step before permanent deletion.
A trash/recovery bin with a retention period.
Ideally, version history or auto-backups for longer-term safety.
This is a core usability issue, not a feature request. Without basic controls, ChatGPT can’t be trusted as a workspace for serious projects.
As a lot of others I use ChatGPT extensively and would like to suggest improvements for managing files and images in the Library.
Currently, there is no way to delete individual images or files directly from the Library without deleting the entire chat. There is also no Trash/Recycle Bin where deleted chats or files are temporarily stored and could be restored if needed.
For security and privacy reasons, it would be very useful to have:
a Trash/Recycle Bin to keep deleted chats/files visible for a short time before permanent deletion,
the ability to delete images and files individually, independent of their associated chat.
This would give users much better transparency, control, and data security.
I hope that the product team is looking into this for future releases.
I just did exactly the same thing. I am surprised and disappointed at how easy it was to do. The basic functionality of ChatGPT leaves a lot to be desired.