Why the hell can’t OpenAI just inform users when they’re about to change something major?
I woke up and suddenly the model selector was gone. The Projects and custom gpt’s sidebar was missing in the Android app. And the voice feature doesn’t work in the browser version. Not a single notification. No changelog. No “this is what we’re updating.” Just complete silence.
I asked ChatGPT. I asked the agent assistant bot on the website. Neither had any idea. All I got was, “It’s a temporary bug.” But is it a bug? Is it permanent? Is it a rollout? Nobody knows.
And where do I finally get an answer? Reddit. Or the Developer Forum. From other users. Not from OpenAI!
I can’t even name how many hours I had to play detective, to figure out the changes bugs or feature changes. Just to get started with normal workflow! After EVERY SINGLE UPDATE!
I have used more time trying to figure out workarounds, navigating bugs or figuring out the changes openai made, than got work done in the past almost 3 years. How is this okay?
I found the model selector—turns out it’s hidden under the “+” button, which is idiotic. It now takes more steps just to choose a model, and I can’t even set a default model for my projects anymore. So every time, I have to manually select it.
On top of that, I can’t use the web browser (where I can actually see the missing Projects) because the voice feature isn’t available there.
(Also, I still refuse to use 5.0 or the advanced voice model, because they still don’t function or respond the way the standard voice model with GPT-4.0 does. But thankfully after months, I can use standard voice and 4o again.)
As for Projects—the only way I’ve been able to recover them is, by searching for a conversation inside each one, which triggers the project to reappear.
But this requires knowing the exact conversation name, and since there’s still no option to customize or automatically name conversations way, it becomes pure guesswork. Chatgpt could surprisingly tell me the name of the conversation today, after I gave it specific details of when, what or where.
This is exactly like the previous bug, where conversations disappeared after a model update and never reappeared—even though they were still technically there. Custom GPTs, which are also missing from the sidebar, AGAIN!
The only way to retrieve them are by, guessing the subject chatgpt created (unless manually renamed). Remembering by heart! It requires searching for an exact keyword, topic name or downloading your entire data log, digging through the files and finding the name of the conversation and manually searching for it.
This is exactly why I used hours to organize conversations into projects. So that when these updates appear or removes everything, I could find most conversations in the project files and trigger the visibility conversations that way. Instead of searching for each one manually, again.
But now the entire projects are missing and I’m supposed to search for them, the same way that I have to search for conversations, assuming that I know every project name or conversation to re-appear in the sidebar. Or I can now go the the web browsers to find the names from there, but still requires manual labor.
Except, I manually searching for a conversation. The project appeared in the sidebar and then… it just vanished again! That means it’s not even a stable workaround. I can’t trust the visibility of my own files.
Instead of making things more efficient, OpenAI has forced me back into a disorganized, manual process that takes ages.
Why is everything being hidden behind detective work?
Instead of being able to work, I spend hours just trying to recover access to my own data or usability after every update. No warnings, no roadmap, no fallback. Just disruption and silence.
Why am I am the one trying to figure out workarounds, just to go back to workflow? Not openai. And usually there’s no fixes for these problems they created. Or they take months to get fixed. Like with standard voice, 5.0 or getting back 4o
Please: if this is a rollout, say it. If it’s a bug, say that too. But above all—communicate with your users. The time and energy lost to these avoidable messes is not just frustrating—it’s completely unnecessary.