It’s been relatively quiet on the AI front after OpenAI released its new open-source ChatGPT models and the highly anticipated GPT-5 upgrade, but the company has stayed busy. First, OpenAI made one of the best paid ChatGPT features available for free earlier this week: Everyone now has access to ChatGPT projects to organize their chats. Then, OpenAI announced a feature that’s not available from competitors: You can now branch conversations in ChatGPT from any specific point to choose different paths for your chat.
A few weeks ago, Sam Altman encouraged ChatGPT power users to send feature requests. X user MicahJanke asked for support for branched conversations: “Let us branch off from chats at specific points without losing the node we branched off from. Sometimes I want to pursue multiple possible branches to a conversation, or sometimes I want to go on like a 1-3 side prompt conversation without it muddying the context of the original chat.” That post was viewed more than 1 million times, with plenty of other users chiming in as well.
OpenAI replied to the message on Thursday when it announced that branched conversations are coming to ChatGPT on the web. The highly requested feature is now available to users who have registered ChatGPT accounts. All they have to do is reload the web app in the browser and look for the new three-dot menu that appears under ChatGPT replies to branch those chats into different conversations.
How branched ChatGPT conversations work
To test the feature, I asked GPT-5 to write a haiku about the meaning of life for me, and the AI delivered the response above. The new three-dot menu has two options: “Branch in new chat” and “Read aloud.” The menu will be available under each reply from ChatGPT, whether it’s a new conversation or an existing one. The mobile ChatGPT app doesn’t support branched conversations.
When you click the button, the internet browser will load another ChatGPT tab that brings the branched chat into focus. It can’t load a new chat in the original tab. The new chat window will place a horizontal line after the response where the branch started to show the user that they’re chatting in a new tab, as seen below. You can then resume the chat and go in a different direction.
Chris Smith
The branched chats get a title that starts with “Branch” to help you navigate chats on the same topic. The branches will be available in the history panel on the left side as separate chats. They won’t appear nested under the original chat. If you’re using the Projects feature, you could easily move a chat and its branches to a project to keep them organized.
This could be a great tool to use to resume chats with ChatGPT from specific points. You won’t have to reload the context you need in a brand-new ChatGPT chat. Instead, you can fork an existing chat from a specific point in the past and explore other options. The feature can be helpful for coding projects or general chats you might have with ChatGPT. You won’t find support for branched chats in Gemini or Claude, but it’s likely other AI chatbots will implement this handy feature in the near future.
