Editing an earlier prompt after refreshing the page sends it as a new message at the bottom instead
Since October 8, ChatGPT Web users have reported a bug where editing an earlier prompt after refreshing the page sends it as a new message at the bottom of the chat. This issue persists across different web browsers, even after clearing caches, disabling extensions, or using incognito mode.
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PublishedOffset at this time: UTC+0Oct 9, 2026, 09:34 UTC
IngestedOffset at this time: UTC+0Oct 9, 2026, 12:00 UTC
- Published
- Oct 9, 2026, 09:34
- Ingested
- Oct 9, 2026, 12:00
- Source type
- Dev community
- Tier
- Community
- Source status
- Sync delayed
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Has anyone else started seeing this?
Since yesterday (October 8), I've been getting a strange bug with editing prompts on ChatGPT Web.
Normally, if I edit an earlier message, ChatGPT branches/restarts the conversation from that message. But after refreshing the page, editing an earlier prompt instead sends the edited prompt as a completely new message at the bottom of the conversation.
I've done some testing and managed to narrow down the trigger pretty well:
- Start a new conversation and edit an earlier prompt without refreshing: works normally
- Leave the conversation open for 20+ minutes and then edit: works normally
- Switch to another conversation, come back, and edit: works normally
- Refresh the page, then edit an earlier prompt: bug occurs
So it doesn't seem to be caused by the age of the conversation, inactivity, or switching between chats. A full page refresh seems to be what triggers it.
Once the page has been refreshed, ChatGPT apparently still lets me click Edit on an earlier message, but when I submit the edit, it gets appended to the end of the current conversation instead of creating a new version/branch from that point.
I'm using ChatGPT on desktop/web in Chrome on Windows.
Has anyone else been able to reproduce this specifically after refreshing a conversation?
Also, yes, I've tried clearing the cache, turning off extensions, and going into incognito mode. And it's the same on other web browsers.