ChatGPT Atlas ends on August 9: Here’s how to save your data

If you use ChatGPT Atlas, you have six days left. OpenAI shuts the AI browser down on August 9, 2026. After that it may not open or browse at all, the company says. OpenAI announced the move on July 9 and calls it a wind down period of roughly 30 days.

Atlas arrived on the Mac on October 21, 2025. Under the hood it ran on Google Chromium, the same foundation as Chrome, with ChatGPT wired straight into it. That leaves the browser a lifespan of less than ten months.

This data disappears

The most important sentence sits in the OpenAI help article and tends to get lost in the coverage. Nothing moves across on its own. Not bookmarks, not open tabs, not your history.

To keep your bookmarks, export them from Atlas as an HTML file and import them somewhere else. In Chrome the path runs through More, then Bookmarks and lists, then Import bookmarks and settings. Open tabs are best saved as bookmarks, or copy the addresses into a document. The same goes for your history. Whatever you still need later, save it now.

Cookies and active logins are the awkward part. Cookies are small files that let a website recognize you without a fresh login. OpenAI offers an export where it can, and warns in the same breath against passing those files on. Whoever holds them can pose as you. They cannot be imported into another browser anyway. In practice that means signing in everywhere again.

Your ChatGPT conversations are not affected. They sit with your account, not with the browser.

Staying put is not an option

OpenAI is unusually blunt about why nobody should stay on Atlas. Browsers need constant security maintenance, and a discontinued product stops getting it at some point. That is exactly where the risk sits. A browser sees every page you open and every password you type.

How quickly AI in the browser turns into a way in has been on display more than once lately. With Microsoft Copilot, websites were able to slip commands to the AI unnoticed. Disguised ad blockers read along in ChatGPT and Gemini chats.

Where the features go

Nothing is being cut without a replacement. OpenAI is moving the agentic browsing, where the assistant clicks and fills in forms by itself, into the new ChatGPT desktop app. Multiple tabs, downloads and logins are meant to work there. Anyone staying with Chrome can use the ChatGPT extension or the sidebar.

A browser of its own was apparently the more expensive route for OpenAI. The features stay, the program around them goes.