OpenAI recently rolled out a simplified sidebar on ChatGPT's mobile apps, and the reaction from daily users has been predictably hostile. Features like Images, Codex, Pulse, and Apps now sit in a horizontal bar above your chats and projects instead of living in the sidebar menu. The idea is to free up space for your conversation history. In practice, plenty of users feel like they got a downgrade.
This is part of a pattern. OpenAI's community forums have threads going back years with titles like "new UI is a big step backwards" and "design changes are infuriating." Every significant interface change draws the same cycle: ship update, absorb complaints, occasionally walk something back.
The frustration isn't irrational. Power users build muscle memory around where buttons live. When those buttons move, workflows break - even temporarily. And OpenAI has been shipping interface changes at a rapid clip in March 2026: location sharing controls, automatic attachment conversion for pastes over 5,000 characters, a new Library feature for saved files, and a Codex plugins directory. That's a lot of UI churn in a single month.
The deeper issue is that ChatGPT is no longer just a chatbot. It's becoming OpenAI's everything-app, with coding tools, image generation, browsing, and app integrations all fighting for screen real estate. The company is reportedly building a unified desktop "superapp" that would merge ChatGPT, Codex, and its Atlas browser into one application. More features means more interface complexity, which means more reorganization, which means more angry forum posts.
For now, the changes are mostly cosmetic and mobile-focused. Your conversations still work the same way. But if you open ChatGPT and can't find something, check the horizontal bar at the top - that's where your tools went.