Uploading and creating files in ChatGPT is easy, but until now, finding those files at a later date was a pain.
That’s all changed thanks to Library, a just-announced ChatGPT feature that makes it easier to spot and manage files you uploaded during previous chats, as well as track down any documents the LLM may have created for you.
The new Library feature is similar to the My Stuff tab in Google’s Gemini app, which aggregates documents and images created during Gemini conversations. Gemini also leans on Google Drive as a place to store documents it created. Anthropic’s Claude, meanwhile, doesn’t have a central repository for uploaded or created files.
You can find ChatGPT’s new Library in the left sidebar just below the Images tab. I spotted it on the web-based ChatGPT, but I don’t see it on ChatGPT for iPhone yet.
Click the Library tab, and you’ll get a storable list of files you’ve either uploaded to ChatGPT or created. You can then download one or more files, or delete them. You can also filter by uploaded or generated files, as well as by files type (including images, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs).
Aside from accessing old files from the Library sidebar tab, you can also grab a saved file within a ChatGPT conversation. Just click the “+” button and select a file from the “Recent files” option or select “Add from library” for a searchable list.
Thanks to its new Library, files within a previous chat will no longer be deleted when you’re clearing out old conversations, OpenAI notes.
OpenAI says deleted files will be wiped from its servers permanently within 30 days, although it reserves the right to keep files from chats that have been “de-identified and dissociated from you” or if it must keep a file for longer “for security or legal obligations.”
It’s worth noting that files you upload to ChatGPT won’t be saved to your Library, nor will any files uploaded to Temporary Chats. That said, files you upload to regular ChatGPT conversation threads may be used for model training, unless you toggle off the “Improve the model for everyone” setting under Settings > Data Controls.
File uploads to ChatGPT have a “hard limit” of 512MB per file, while CSV files and spreadsheets are limited to 50MB and images are capped at 20MB, OpenAI says.