How To Use Projects in ChatGPT?

ChatGPT’s new Projects feature helps you organize your AI-assisted work in a dedicated workspace.

It lets you group related conversations, files, and instructions together into neat, customizable folders. With Projects, you can maintain a streamlined workflow, easily recall past discussions, and ensure that ChatGPT always understands the context of what you’re working on.

In this article, we'll cover how to access Projects in ChatGPT, their benefits, main features and their applications.

Who Can Benefit and For What Tasks

Professionals and Project Managers

Working on multiple, complex initiatives? Use Projects to create dedicated folders for each. Keep your team’s instructions, reference documents, and previous ChatGPT conversations about a specific deliverable all in one place. This helps you stay on track and reduces the time spent searching for old messages or files.

Writers and Content Creators

If you’re drafting articles, planning a book, or developing story outlines, Projects can hold your research notes, character sketches, and previous ChatGPT-generated content. Everything you need is organized in a single folder, making it easier to maintain consistency and track iterations.

Students and Researchers

For those juggling coursework or research, Projects provide a neat structure to store references, annotated texts, and chat-based insights. It’s a great way to separate study topics or research themes, ensuring a clear academic workflow.

General Users

Even if you’re using ChatGPT for personal tasks—like trip planning, home maintenance, or gift exchanges—Projects lets you keep your details and progress under one roof, making it simpler to revisit and refine your plans.

How to Access ChatGPT Projects

1. Availability:

   • Available for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Teams users.
   • Free users will get access later.

2. Platform Support:

   • Projects can be accessed on the ChatGPT website and the Windows desktop app.
   • On mobile apps and MacOS desktop apps, you can currently view Projects, with full support expected over time.

3. Getting Started:

   • Open ChatGPT and look for the Projects section in the sidebar.
   • Click the “+” (Plus) icon to create a new project.
   • Name your project and choose a color for easy visual identification.
   • Projects can contain both existing chats (drag them in) and new ones you create from scratch.

Feature 1: Organize Your Chats into Folders

What it is:
Projects let you create folder-like workspaces where you can sort and store multiple ChatGPT conversations. Instead of scrolling through a long list of chats, you’ll have neatly categorized projects for each of your tasks or interests.

How to use it:

• Click “New Project” to create a dedicated folder.
• Drag existing chats into that Project or start a new chat inside it.
• Switch between Projects in the sidebar to quickly find relevant conversations.

Feature 2: Add Files and Custom Instructions

What it is:
Beyond just chats, Projects lets you upload files and provide custom instructions at the project level. These instructions guide ChatGPT on how to respond within that project’s context—think of it as giving ChatGPT a ‘role’ or ‘style guide’ tailored to each project.

How to use it:

• Within a Project, add documents (like PDFs, text files, or code snippets).
• Set custom instructions telling ChatGPT how to behave—for example, adopt a formal tone, always use a specific citation style, or even open Canvas for coding tasks by default.
• ChatGPT will refer to these instructions and files as data sources, making responses more accurate and context-aware.

Feature 3: Centralized Workspace for Complex Tasks

What it is:
Projects serve as an all-in-one hub. Instead of using multiple apps, you can integrate ChatGPT’s various capabilities—like Canvas for editing text and code, voice mode for real-time audio interaction, or web search for up-to-date info—within a single organized environment.

How to use it:

• Launch a project and use shortcuts or toolbars to open Canvas, initiate searches, or bring in other ChatGPT features.
• Keep everything from drafts, research, outlines, to final versions all linked to the same Project.

Future Integrations and Capabilities

OpenAI plans to expand Projects with support for more file types, integration with cloud storage services like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, and toggling between different models for different tasks.

Conclusion

By organizing your chats, files, and instructions into coherent folders, Projects let you transform ChatGPT into a multi-functional workspace.

As OpenAI continues to develop and integrate more features, Projects is start to look like an indispensable tool for anyone who uses ChatGPT daily and wants to make this process more efficient.

Valeriia Kuka

Valeriia Kuka, Head of Content at Learn Prompting, is passionate about making AI and ML accessible. Valeriia previously grew a 60K+ follower AI-focused social media account, earning reposts from Stanford NLP, Amazon Research, Hugging Face, and AI researchers. She has also worked with AI/ML newsletters and global communities with 100K+ members and authored clear and concise explainers and historical articles.