Bulk Export ChatGPT History

Current status: Single-conversation exports

Right now, GPT2Notes exports one conversation at a time. You need to:

1. Open a ChatGPT conversation
2. Click the GPT2Notes extension icon
3. Select your export format
4. Repeat for each conversation you want to save

While this works well for archiving important chats, it's not practical if you have dozens or hundreds of conversations to back up.

Why isn't bulk export available yet?

We're building bulk export carefully to ensure it's safe, reliable, and respects both ChatGPT's API limits and your browser's performance. Here's what we're considering:

Rate limiting

ChatGPT's servers may throttle or block requests if you export too many conversations too quickly. We need to implement smart queueing to avoid triggering rate limits.

Browser performance

Processing hundreds of conversations at once could freeze your browser. We're designing a background worker that processes conversations in batches without disrupting your browsing.

Error handling

With bulk operations, some exports might fail due to network issues, formatting problems, or API errors. We need robust retry logic and progress tracking so you don't lose work.

User experience

Bulk export needs clear progress indicators, pause/resume functionality, and easy filtering (e.g., "export only conversations from the last month"). We're designing the UI carefully.

Bulk export roadmap

Here's our plan for bulk export functionality:

Workarounds for bulk exporting today

While we build proper bulk export, here are some strategies to back up multiple conversations efficiently:

1. Prioritize important conversations

You probably don't need to export every single chat. Start with:

• Conversations with valuable code snippets or solutions
• Long-form research or writing sessions
• Chats related to ongoing projects
• Conversations you reference frequently

2. Use ChatGPT's native export

ChatGPT offers a native data export in your account settings. Go to Settings → Data controls → Export data. OpenAI will email you a JSON file with all your conversations.

This JSON export is comprehensive but not very readable. You can use GPT2Notes to convert individual conversations from the JSON into cleaner formats.

3. Export in batches

Set aside 10-15 minutes to manually export your most important conversations. Open each one, click GPT2Notes, and export to Notion or download locally. You can typically export 20-30 conversations in a session.

4. Establish a routine

Instead of bulk-exporting everything, make it a habit to export conversations right after completing them. End each important ChatGPT session by clicking "Export to Notion" before closing the tab.

Technical considerations for developers

If you're technical and curious about the challenges of bulk export, here are some details:

Browser extension limitations

Browser extensions can't easily access the ChatGPT conversation list. We need to scrape the sidebar or use ChatGPT's internal API (which isn't officially documented and could change).

ChatGPT API rate limits

OpenAI doesn't publish rate limits for web scraping. Too many requests could result in temporary blocks or CAPTCHAs. We need to test safe request intervals (likely 2-5 seconds between exports).

Notion API rate limits

Notion's public API has a rate limit of 3 requests per second. For bulk Notion sync, we need to throttle exports and potentially split large conversations across multiple API calls.

Storage and memory

Processing hundreds of conversations means temporarily storing a lot of data. We need to stream exports to disk incrementally rather than loading everything into memory.

Bulk export FAQ