ChatGPT’s new search tool saves you from digging through old chats, files, and images

If you have ever lost a great ChatGPT answer somewhere in your endless chat history, that headache is finally over. OpenAI has rolled out a major search upgrade that lets you find old chats, projects, documents, and images all from one place.

Before this update, the sidebar search only pulled up past conversations, leaving uploaded files, projects, and generated images completely out of reach. The new search option is now available across web, iOS, and Android, on every ChatGPT plan, including free accounts.

How does the new ChatGPT search work?

You can start searching right from the ChatGPT sidebar, just like before, except now it covers everything in your account instead of only chats. If you want to narrow things down, there are filters that let you search by specific content type, such as pulling up only images or files tied to one particular project. Once you find what you need, selecting a result opens that chat, project, or file directly inside ChatGPT to skip endless scrolling.

This rollout also lines up closely with OpenAI’s recent GPT-5.6 launch, which brought its own wave of upgrades, including a new AI agent called ChatGPT Work that takes on entire projects instead of single questions. It connects to your apps and files, works through multi-step tasks, and can keep running in the background even after you close ChatGPT.

Why does it matter?

The new ChatGPT search does not change what it stores; it simply makes everything already saved much easier to surface. That’s useful if you regularly use ChatGPT for ongoing projects, research, or document analysis. By bringing everything together in one searchable place, you can look for what you need, filter the results, and jump back into your work within seconds.