OpenAI admits ChatGPT's redesigned desktop app became "kind of a mess" and outlines upcoming fixes

OpenAI has acknowledged that the redesigned ChatGPT desktop app became more confusing after recent updates and says additional changes are on the way.

Speaking on The Wall Street Journal journalist Joanna Stern's podcast, OpenAI President Greg Brockman agreed with the description of the redesigned app as "kind of a mess," calling it "incremental progress towards the future," as first reported by 9to5Mac.

The criticism followed OpenAI's decision to combine three products into a single desktop app: the ChatGPT chatbot, the Codex coding tool, and the new Work agent for workplace tasks.

As a result, ChatGPT's familiar interface and chat history became less prominent, while the new Work mode took center stage. Many users reported difficulty finding their previous conversations and Projects. Others criticized the app's dramatically larger footprint, which reportedly grew from about 159MB to roughly 1.5GB after the redesign.

OpenAI has already rolled back some of the more controversial changes. The company restored the sidebar with chat history and Projects, added a Chat / Work mode switch at the top of the app, and separated Codex into its own menu.

According to Brockman, however, those changes are only temporary. He said OpenAI's original vision was to avoid separate tabs altogether, and by the end of the year the standalone Work mode is expected to disappear. Instead, its capabilities will be integrated directly into ChatGPT.

Despite the backlash, Brockman said the redesign achieved one of its goals by driving rapid adoption of Codex. According to him, the coding tool's user base doubled from 5 million to 10 million users within days.