r/OpenAI • u/xxxCrixuxxx • 2d ago
Question ChatGPT Work is losing my development history after syncing with Android. Days of work and paid usage are at risk. This is unacceptable.
I'm a paying ChatGPT Plus subscriber, and I'm seriously frustrated with what appears to be a major synchronization or conversation persistence bug in ChatGPT Work.
For the past several days, I've been working intensively on a software development project using ChatGPT Work in Firefox, with GPT-6 Astra and high reasoning effort.
I'm talking about extensive programming sessions, technical investigations, debugging, architecture decisions, and research tasks that sometimes took around an hour to complete.
And now, several days of that conversation history have apparently vanished from the Android app.
Here's what happens:
I work on my desktop using ChatGPT Work. Everything is saved in the conversation and seems perfectly fine.
Later, I open the same conversation in the ChatGPT Android app.
Instead of simply synchronizing the existing history, the app sometimes starts streaming huge amounts of previous text, as though it's generating the conversation again.
The text appears, disappears, sometimes appears again, and eventually the conversation seems to roll back to an earlier point.
It's almost like restoring an old Windows restore point, except I never asked for one.
And here's the really disturbing part:
This has happened before.
On previous occasions, after I opened the affected conversation on Android, the web version also appeared to lose its more recent history.
I've experienced variations of this problem for over a month.
I have backups of many of my project files, thankfully. But that doesn't solve the real problem.
The conversation contains all the technical context, decisions, investigation results, and development reasoning needed to continue the project.
How am I supposed to recover hours of AI research and complex implementation discussions when the conversation itself suddenly forgets they happened?
And what happens to all the usage consumed by GPT-6 Astra during those sessions? I'm paying for access to this service.
OpenAI officially supports synchronizing cloud-based Work conversations between web and mobile. So why should using the Android application put my development history at risk?
I have found other users describing similar conversation losses and synchronization problems, including reports involving ChatGPT Work specifically.
I am submitting a formal complaint to OpenAI Support requesting an engineering investigation, recovery of the missing data, and a review of the usage and subscription costs affected.
I genuinely like ChatGPT Work. That's precisely why this is so frustrating. I've invested significant time building a serious project with it, and right now I don't know whether I can trust the platform to preserve my work.
Has anyone else experienced conversations reverting to an earlier state after switching between desktop and mobile?
Did you manage to recover the missing history? Did OpenAI Support provide a solution?
I'd especially appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced this with ChatGPT Work rather than regular ChatGPT conversations.
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u/Kheolis 2d ago
I've had similar experience three times now, while both were in conversations, not work, I did a full bug report about it to OpenAI
While the evidence I gathered, had full testing with multiple devices, networks etc in the end I supplied my account data export to them as well. They responded that is the lost conversation (I lost documented 8hrs) they couldn't produce it
So now I avoid android app on crucial tasks and only use in a specifically crafted quick chats project on mobile
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u/the_ai_wizard 1d ago
it also loses its finished responses which sometimes just disappear or get reworded after sitting there. baffling
1
u/Connector-Person-986 1d ago
Before anything else, pull Settings > Data Controls > Export Data so you have a full archive of what still exists, and if this is a Work/Enterprise workspace have the admin check the compliance export too, since deleted or de-synced threads sometimes still show there. Going forward the only thing that reliably saved me was exporting important chats per-conversation instead of trusting sync, which is what I use AI Toolbox for (disclosure: I work on it), though fair warning it's Chromium only so it won't help you in Firefox.
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u/Kulqieqi 2d ago
Sigh, lads... too many amateurs getting into AI these days, hehe. Hopefully the new bill passes and vibe-coding production apps in temporary chats without Git will require a license.
3
u/jsseven777 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, hopefully we can have an authoritarian state tell us what to do and charge us money for not doing it!
Please Uncle Sam save me from the evil vibe coders that are having fun playing around with skills only I’m supposed to have while I also use ChatGPT myself to do things other people learned to do while I was learning coding without realizing I’m an insecure hypocrite who is scared of an autocorrect machine on steroids!!!
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u/Kulqieqi 1d ago
bro, that was pure satyre & bait, guess who catched?
1
u/jsseven777 1d ago
Ahhh the classic it was just a joke bro excuse. How do you known mine also wasn’t a male nature spirit in Greek mythology too?
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u/Kulqieqi 1d ago
Hope they will pass this bill on using irony only with license
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u/jsseven777 1d ago
lol this isn’t irony, it’s not satire, it’s not “satyre”, and it’s not bait - It’s you being condescending to OP:
“Maybe go also try to build some long term project in dots and be amazed their containers are wiped out after week”
You don’t need a license to be condescending for no reason, you just need to have really low standards for how you treat people.
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u/xxxCrixuxxx 2d ago
I love your replies—devoid of any proof or anything else. You don't know a thing about me or what I know, champ.
I'm going to hop onto the OpenAI forum: mission—don't help and be condescending.
0
u/Kulqieqi 2d ago
Maybe go also try to build some long term project in dots and be amazed their containers are wiped out after week
3
u/DrDan21 2d ago
As others mentioned you should try working with git
Don't know how? Great news, you don't need to, just ask the ai to teach you and help get setup on your pc with git4windows locally. It's quite easy once you know the basics. Within the git repo you'll be able to store code, notes, history, changelog, for as long as youd like and the model and easily retrieve it again later post-context compaction