OpenAI acknowledged complaints about its redesigned ChatGPT app for Mac and restored direct access to chats on July 17, but the fix does nothing to address the core problem which is that the app is now a bloated, slow Electron-based behemoth that users openly dislike despite the improvements.
The redesign merged Codex workflows into the main ChatGPT app, renaming the original as ChatGPT Classic and creating immediate backlash. Users flooded OpenAI’s Community forums and X with complaints about buried chat history and confusing navigation. Thibault “Tibo” Sottiaux, Engineering Lead at Open AI, acknowledging the criticism, promised to restore chats and Projects to the sidebar, clarify the distinction between ChatGPT Work and Codex, and address other usability issues. The new fix delivers on that first promise, restoring basic chat access so the app functions as a chatbot again.
Evening! We’ve gotten lots of great feedback on the new ChatGPT desktop app (which we didn’t get totally quite right on the first try), and as a result, we’ve made some changes.
1/ ChatGPT conversation history and projects are now visible in the sidebar. Also, your Chat and Work… pic.twitter.com/ffacbMdukN
— Tibo (@thsottiaux) July 17, 2026
Yeah, I’m still not giving up on ChatGPT Classic.
The new ChatGPT app weighs 1.5GB, a nine-fold increase from ChatGPT Classic’s lean 170MB footprint. It launches slower, manages chats and projects poorly, and users have described it as a frustrating mess. OpenAI replaced a native macOS app with Electron, a browser-based framework that trades native performance and responsiveness for cross-platform consistency.
Mac users who rely on ChatGPT for daily work face three distinct problems. Developers and technical users working with Codex now have one app instead of two, which sounds efficient in theory but means they absorb Electron’s performance penalty whether they use Codex or not. Power users managing dozens or hundreds of saved chats lose the speed they had before; the sidebar struggles to render large chat histories, and search is noticeably slower. Casual users simply get a worse product which is an app that takes longer to start, uses more memory, and feels sluggish compared to its predecessor.
On an M3 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM, the new app consumes 400MB to 600MB in active use, compared to 80MB to 120MB for ChatGPT Classic. Even with Apple Silicon’s efficiency, the overhead is inexcusable for a text-based chat interface.
By merging ChatGPT, Codex, and the new ChatGPT Work agent into a single interface, OpenAI prioritized feature parity and unified branding over the polished Mac experience that existed before. Electron allows OpenAI to ship updates to Windows, Mac, and Linux simultaneously without maintaining separate native codebases, which cuts development costs and accelerates feature rollout. For Mac users who valued a fast, lightweight chat interface, ChatGPT Classic remains available but hidden. OpenAI has deliberately obscured it in support documentation, making it inaccessible to most users. We covered how to download ChatGPT Classic for Mac earlier, and it remains the best way to use ChatGPT on your Mac until OpenAI either slims down the new app or acknowledges that the redesign was a mistake.
