What Was ChatGPT Pulse and What Replaced It? (2026)
ChatGPT Pulse was OpenAI's proactive daily briefing feed. It researched your chats, feedback and connected apps overnight, then greeted you each morning with a set of personalised visual cards. OpenAI retired Pulse on 17 June 2026 and folded its useful parts into scheduled tasks and web monitoring, which you set up yourself.
ChatGPT Pulse arrived in September 2025 as one of the most hyped features OpenAI had ever shipped: an AI that starts the conversation instead of waiting to be asked. Nine months later it quietly disappeared. This guide explains what Pulse did, why OpenAI retired it, and what replaced it inside ChatGPT today.
In this guide
What Was ChatGPT Pulse?
ChatGPT Pulse was a proactive feed inside the ChatGPT app. Each night it ran a background research pass, drawing on your chat history, your saved memories, your thumbs up and thumbs down feedback and, if you switched them on, connected apps such as Google Calendar and Gmail. Each morning it greeted you with a set of visual cards you could scan quickly or open for more detail.
OpenAI launched Pulse on 25 September 2025 as a preview for Pro subscribers on mobile, with TechCrunch reporting that it generated five to ten briefs designed to get you up to speed on your day. A web version followed, and OpenAI said it aimed to reach Plus and then everyone. It never got there: Pulse stayed a paid, mostly Pro feature until it was retired.
The idea was attractive: an assistant that quietly researches the things you care about while you sleep, so each morning starts with information ready and waiting. Sam Altman called it his favourite ChatGPT feature and said Pulse worked for you overnight. In practice, that ambition ran into problems that explain a lot about where proactive AI still goes wrong today.
How Did ChatGPT Pulse Work?
Pulse ran asynchronously. There was no button to press and no prompt to write. The overnight pass synthesised your memory, chat history and feedback into a set of topics, and the results appeared the next day as cards at the top of the app.
Each night, ChatGPT reviewed your recent chats, memories and feedback to decide what to research.
Each morning, its updates appeared as topical visual cards you could scan or open.
You tapped curate to request what you wanted to see, such as a Friday roundup of local events.
Thumbs up and thumbs down tuned the next night's run, and you could view or delete your feedback history.
Gmail and Google Calendar connections added context, and they were off by default in settings.
Every card was available for that day only. You could save one as a chat or ask a follow up, which moved it into your conversation history. OpenAI also said topics passed through safety checks to avoid showing content that violated its policies.
What Happened to ChatGPT Pulse?
OpenAI announced Pulse's retirement on 17 June 2026, about nine months after launch. Its release notes said Pulse was being sunset as proactive updates moved into scheduled tasks, and Pro users kept access for 14 days while the change rolled out. The cards no longer generate. OpenAI framed the replacement as giving people direct control over what gets checked and when, rather than having the model guess from chat history. The direction OpenAI is pushing everything, from Work mode to Projects, is the same: you set the task, ChatGPT does the work.
The pattern was visible in search before it was official. Prowlo's analysis, citing Google Ads data, counted about 33,100 monthly UK searches for ChatGPT Pulse at the September 2025 peak, falling to roughly 1,300 by May 2026. That is a fall of about 96 per cent before the feature was retired altogether.
Why Did OpenAI Retire Pulse?
OpenAI never published a detailed post mortem, so what follows draws on its release notes plus reporting and community discussion at the time. Three problems came up again and again.
Relevance decayed. Pulse kept inferring what you cared about from old chats, so it surfaced questions you had resolved weeks earlier. A week before the shutdown, the developer known as banteg said it still latched onto topics they had long finished with, and asked OpenAI to stop spending computer time on it.
Deciding when to speak up is a genuinely hard research problem. ProAgentBench, a benchmark built from 28,500 events across more than 500 hours of real computer activity, found the best model was right only about 64.4 per cent of the time when deciding whether to proactively assist.
A feed of reading material became homework. Pulse delivered things to read but no action attached, and a 2019 randomised trial found batching notifications about three times a day beat both instant delivery and switching them off entirely for wellbeing.
What Replaced ChatGPT Pulse?
Scheduled tasks and web monitoring replaced it inside ChatGPT. You describe what you want done, such as a daily brief or a watch on a topic, set a schedule, and receive results by push or email. The difference from Pulse is philosophical as much as technical: Pulse was an inferred feed, where the model guessed what you wanted from your history. Scheduled tasks are explicit: you write the standing query yourself. The passive inferred feed died, and the explicit task with an output lived.
ChatGPT Pulse | Scheduled tasks and web monitoring |
Model guessed what to check from your chat history | You define exactly what gets checked and when |
One automatic daily briefing of cards | Results arrive per task, by push or email |
Pro subscribers only, mobile and web | Available from Free upward, with limits by plan |
Retired on 17 June 2026 | Live today, up to 15 active tasks on Pro |
OpenAI's scheduled tasks help article sets the active task limits by plan: 3 for Free and Go, 5 for Plus, 10 for Business and Edu, and 15 for Pro and Enterprise. Free accounts can run a recurring task no more than once a day, while eligible paid plans support recurring tasks up to once an hour with exact delivery times. If you already use ChatGPT for reminders, scheduled tasks are the same idea taken further.
How Do You Set Up a Scheduled Task Instead?
Open ChatGPT and go to the Scheduled page, or simply describe what you want in a conversation, such as a short daily news brief at 8am.
Review the schedule it proposes: one time, daily, weekly or a custom cadence.
Turn on push or email notifications under Settings, then Notifications, so results actually reach you.
Open any task from Scheduled to edit, pause, resume or delete it.
Keep inside your plan's active task limit, or pause one before adding another.
How Do Other AI Assistants Handle Proactive AI?
Pulse was not the only attempt at a proactive assistant, and the survivors all share one shape: you define a standing query, the system checks quietly, and what arrives is a deliverable rather than a card to admire.
Gemini Scheduled Actions can wake you with a summary of your calendar and unread email, configured by you.
Perplexity Tasks run background monitoring and stay silent when a check finds nothing new.
Claude scheduled tasks run agent sessions in the cloud on a cadence you set, with tools and outputs.
ChatGPT scheduled tasks and web monitoring are Pulse's official successor, with the same quiet background checks.
OpenAI is still pushing in the same direction. Its newer dots are always-on agents that keep working on a goal between conversations, and scheduled tasks are the simplest version of that same idea. If you are new to the assistant itself, start with our complete ChatGPT guide.
Key Takeaways
ChatGPT Pulse was a proactive daily briefing feed that researched your chats, feedback and connected apps overnight.
It launched on 25 September 2025 for Pro users on mobile and never reached the free tier before it closed.
Search interest fell about 96 per cent, from roughly 33,100 monthly UK searches at peak to about 1,300 by May 2026.
OpenAI retired it on 17 June 2026, moving proactive updates into scheduled tasks and web monitoring.
Scheduled task limits by plan are 3 for Free and Go, 5 for Plus, 10 for Business and Edu, and 15 for Pro and Enterprise.
FAQs
Is ChatGPT Pulse still available? No. OpenAI retired it on 17 June 2026 and replaced it with scheduled tasks and web monitoring.
Was ChatGPT Pulse free? No. It launched for Pro subscribers, the tier OpenAI prices from 200 US dollars a month, and it never reached the free tier.
What replaced ChatGPT Pulse? Scheduled tasks and web monitoring inside ChatGPT, which you set up yourself under Scheduled.
Can I still get a daily ChatGPT briefing? Yes. Create a recurring scheduled task and ask for a short brief each morning, delivered by push or email.
How many scheduled tasks can I have? Active task limits are 3 on Free and Go, 5 on Plus, 10 on Business and Edu, and 15 on Pro and Enterprise.
Did Pulse use my private chats? It drew on your chat history, memory and feedback, and optional Gmail and Calendar connections, all tunable in settings before it closed.
Further Reading
These are the sources the facts in this post were checked against on 22 October 2026.
Conclusion
ChatGPT Pulse was a bold experiment in an AI assistant that works while you sleep, and its retirement is the clearest public lesson so far in why proactive AI is hard: relevance fades, timing is difficult to judge, and a feed without action becomes one more thing to check. The scheduled tasks that replaced it keep the control with you, which is the direction most AI assistants are now taking. Explore more plain English ChatGPT guides on whatischatgpt.co.uk.
