Why did ChatGPT make editing worse? Bring back the old version history

I’m genuinely so frustrated with the way editing works now.

We have that new “see versions” and "branching feature, we can still edit messages, but somehow the experience is worse than before.

With the old system, if I edited a prompt, I could freely move between versions and actually see the different branches of the conversation. It was simple. I could compare outputs, revisit an older edit, and understand exactly what changed.

Now, I can edit a message, but the swiping feature is gone. I can’t easily switch between my edits, compare them side-by-side, or even see what prompt I used for a previous version. If I’m experimenting with writing, coding, or literally anything that requires tweaking prompts multiple times, it’s a massive downgrade.

Am I the only one who hates this change? I just want the old editing experience back where I could freely switch between edited prompts, see exactly what I wrote in previous edits, compare different conversation branches, navigate version history without feeling like I’m losing parts of the chat, etc.

For people who use chatgpt for long-form writing and other works, this has made the experience way more annoying than it needs to be.

Is there some hidden setting I’m missing, or did openai actually remove one of the most useful quality-of-life features? Can I switch back to the old version? This is seriously annoying me and has totally ruined my chatgpt experience. Please bring back the old editing version, this new update is extremely disappointing.

It honestly took my experience from a 9/10 to a 1/10 overnight. Right now it feels like user experience wasn’t considered at all and they don’t actually care about us whatsoever, and it’s incredibly frustrating.

There are a few feature gates being tested on subgroups of ChatGPT users related to message editing and branching, and which may be per-model. You can see them in internally-transmitted objects and client code variables.

Your intolerance of the changes, vented through multiple social platforms, and by whacking in-app thumbs-down, may inform if OpenAI goes through with the proposal.