OpenAI president admits new ChatGPT desktop app is ‘kind of a mess,’ teases tab-free design

OpenAI president Greg Brockman acknowledged in an interview with Joanna Stern that the new ChatGPT desktop app is 'kind of a mess,' but said the company plans to eliminate the Work tab by end of year and have its functionality 'seamlessly mold into ChatGPT.' Brockman noted that despite the confusing rollout, Codex users grew from 5 million to 10 million in a few days after merging the apps.

In a wide-ranging interview with Joanna Stern https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b 44Ra8msls , OpenAI president Greg Brockman addressed the company’s recent changes to the ChatGPT desktop app and discussed its plans for a tab-free interface. Watch it below. Work might soon work seamlessly within ChatGPT A few days ago, Joanna Stern published a teaser of an upcoming interview with OpenAI president Greg Brockman on her new YouTube channel, New Things https://www.youtube.com/@JoannaStern . Today, Stern published the full interview, which covers topics including the new ChatGPT Voice https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/08/openai-upgrading-chatgpt-with-all-new-voice-mode-experience-watch-here/ , OpenAI’s hardware ambitions https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/14/report-openais-first-device-will-be-a-portable-speaker-with-a-camera-and-other-sensors/ , the Apple lawsuit https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/10/apple-sues-openai-trade-secret-theft/ , and the recent Hugging Face hack https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/ . At one point, Stern brings up OpenAI’s recent decision to merge the ChatGPT and Codex desktop apps while introducing Work, a new agentic mode for ChatGPT. The resulting interface proved confusing, particularly for users who simply wanted to keep using ChatGPT but struggled to find their chat history. OpenAI later updated the app https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/openai-fixes-chat-access-in-the-chatgpt-app-for-mac/ , adding separate Work and Chat tabs at the top of the interface, along with a drop-down menu in the left-hand panel for switching between ChatGPT and Codex. While the app is now less hard to navigate, it remains somewhat convoluted. When asked about the misstep, Brockman agreed with Stern’s characterization that the new UI “is kind of a mess,” adding that it represents “incremental progress towards the future,” where the Work tab will eventually disappear and its functionality will “seamlessly mold into ChatGPT.” Here’s Brockman’s full quote: It’s kind of a mess. We agree. And so what you’re seeing is incremental progress towards the future. We were hoping to land with zero tabs, but this is… I think the way that we also view it is that we need to iteratively deploy, right? We need to get this out there, get feedback, and so this is the current state of where things are. But I definitely think that end of year, there should be no Work tab. You know, that this will be something that will just seamlessly mold into ChatGPT. Brockman also said that despite the confusing rollout of the merged apps, OpenAI is still seeing the results it hoped for, with Codex going from 5 to 10 million users in just a few days. When pressed on whether that growth was simply the result of “shoehorning” Codex into the ChatGPT app, Brockman again conceded, while also arguing that this was partly the point: For sure there’s lots of people coming in, but the point is that there’s so many people who could be getting much more value from AI. And my vision, the way that we think about this, is that we want to help bring those people who are relying on AI to get far more value and so to really be able to experience agents, to have agents be something that do come to mass consumer scale. The entire interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b 44Ra8msls is quite interesting and well worth watching. It also includes a very Joanna Stern-like attempt to include ChatGPT Voice into the conversation, and that went as well as you’re probably imagining. Worth checking out on Amazon Geoffrey Cain – ‘Steve Jobs in Exile’ https://amzn.to/4v3CS5Q David Pogue – ’Apple: The First 50 Years’ https://amzn.to/46Y3nQj MacBook Neo https://amzn.to/47vJmkn Logitech MX Master 4 https://amzn.to/3KmIQN7 AirPods Pro 3 https://www.amazon.com/Apple-Cancellation-Translation-Headphones-High-Fidelity/dp/B0FQFB8FMG?tag=marcmendes-20 AirTag 2nd Generation – 4 Pack https://amzn.to/4sewc3a Apple Watch Series 11 https://amzn.to/46VomDB Wireless CarPlay adapter https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F6T6N2B1?tag=marcmendes-20 FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. https://9to5mac.com/about/ affiliate our homepage http://9to5mac.com/ for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on exclusive stories https://9to5mac.com/feature/exclusive/ , reviews https://9to5mac.com/guides/review/ , how-tos https://9to5mac.com/guides/how-to/ , and subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/9to5mac