# ChatGPT Desktop Merges Codex and Work — Atlas Shuts Down Aug 9 > Source: > Published: 2026-07-18 07:08:59+00:00 OpenAI is killing Atlas. The standalone AI browser it launched last October shuts down permanently on August 9, 2026 — and your bookmarks, open tabs, and browser history will not transfer automatically. If you have anything in Atlas worth keeping, you have three weeks. But the deadline is a distraction. The real story is what OpenAI built to replace it: a unified desktop app that folds Chat, the standalone Codex app, and Atlas’s browser-agent ambitions into three modes under one roof. That consolidation changes how you should think about your AI toolchain. ## Atlas Is Gone. Here Is What to Do Before August 9 Atlas launched on macOS in October 2025 as a Chromium-based browser with ChatGPT woven in. It had a sidebar assistant, a paid agent mode that could automate tasks on websites, and a set of safety constraints that, in retrospect, defined its failure: no file downloads, no code execution, no access to the file system. MIT Technology Review’s headline at launch captured the problem perfectly: *“OpenAI’s new Atlas browser but I still don’t know what it’s for.”* Eight months later, OpenAI agreed. If you are an Atlas user, your ChatGPT conversation history is safe — it lives in your ChatGPT account, not in Atlas. Everything else requires manual action before the August 9 deadline: **Bookmarks:** Open Atlas, export bookmarks as an HTML file, then import into Chrome via More > Bookmarks and lists > Import bookmarks and settings.**Open tabs:** No automatic transfer. Bookmark what you need or copy URLs into a document now.**Browser history:** Does not transfer. Save or bookmark anything you may need before the deadline.**Cookies and sessions:** Atlas provides export options where available — handle these carefully. After August 9, Atlas is gone. No data recovery, no extensions, no history retrieval. The [official OpenAI migration guide](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001371-evolving-atlas-into-chatgpt-for-browser-based-agentic-work) has the full step-by-step details. ## What Replaced Atlas: One App, Three Modes On July 9, OpenAI released a unified ChatGPT desktop app for macOS and Windows. Three modes now sit side by side in a single shell: **Chat:** Standard conversational ChatGPT. Same as before.**Work:** A long-running agent that connects to your files, browser, and apps, then produces reviewable artifacts — documents, spreadsheets, presentations, structured research. Point it at a goal, let it run for hours, approve actions as they come.**Codex:** The dedicated software development mode. Inline diff editing, pull request review in the side panel, Computer Use powered by GPT-5.6, multi-repository support. The standalone Codex desktop app is now this tab. All three modes run on GPT-5.6 underneath. Work and Chat share plugins. The [official Work and Codex documentation](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001275-chatgpt-work-and-codex) details how the modes interact and what each can access. ## The Shared Credit Pool Issue Teams Need to Know Here is what OpenAI did not put in the headline: Work sessions draw from Codex usage credits. Run a long Work session drafting a technical spec or architecture document, and you are pulling from the same usage pool your team relies on for Codex coding runs. A developer using Work to generate docs can quietly drain a team’s Codex budget. This behavior is not prominently documented — the developer community surfaced it. Budget accordingly before Work sessions roll out to the whole team. ## The Launch Was Rocky. OpenAI Fixed It Quickly. The July 9 redesign initially buried chat history and Projects below Work-focused menu items. Developer forums were blunt. OpenAI rolled back the worst of it within days: conversation history and Projects are back in the sidebar, and chat now syncs across web, desktop, and mobile. The app that exists today is not the same chaos that shipped on launch day. If your first impression was bad, it is worth trying again. ## Was Atlas a Mistake? The consolidation was the right call. A standalone AI browser competing with Chrome was always a harder pitch than a unified AI agent app with browser capabilities built in. Atlas’s constraints — no downloads, no code execution, no file system access — made it more of a feature than a product. The eight-month lifespan stings, but the alternative was shipping an underpowered browser agent indefinitely. Folding those capabilities into Work, where they make sense as one tool among many, is better architecture. Whether OpenAI should have shipped Atlas at all is a fair question. Probably it was a learning exercise — they learned what browser agents need to be genuinely useful, and Work reflects that learning. You can see the full technical breakdown of the new unified approach in [Neowin’s coverage of the July 9 announcement](https://www.neowin.net/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-and-unveils-unified-desktop-app-with-codex-built-in/). ## What to Do Now Download the unified ChatGPT desktop app from [chatgpt.com](https://chatgpt.com) if you have not already. Export your Atlas data before August 9. If your team uses Codex, audit how Work mode will affect your credit consumption before enabling it broadly. And read the [developer production guide from NxCode](https://www.nxcode.io/resources/news/chatgpt-work-codex-gpt-5-6-agent-runtime-guide-2026) if you plan to integrate Work mode into any real workflow — the credit-pooling behavior alone is worth understanding before you start. Three modes, one app, one shared credit pool. Get ahead of it before August 9.