-as of [9 DECEMBER 2025]-
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*YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE ORDER OF “PROJECT LISTINGS” IN [LEFT COLUMN]* —>
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-CLICK THE “NEW PROJECT” FOLDER AT THE TOP TO CREATE A NEW PROJECT-
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Short answer: not right now, at least not manually.
At the moment:
Projects in the left sidebar are shown in a mostly fixed/system order (recently used, created, or shared with you), not in a user-defined custom order.
The official docs talk about creating, renaming, coloring, and deleting projects, but don’t mention any way to drag-reorder them or sort them manually.
(OpenAI Help Center)
There’s also no hidden “sort projects” option in settings (sorting options you might see in community posts are about chats or GPTs, not projects).
(OpenAI Developer Community)
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So for now, the only “ordering” control you have is indirect:
Renaming a project (three dots ▸ Rename) just changes the label, not its ordering.
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Recent activity can affect which projects show higher in some views, but you can’t pin or drag them
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If/when they add custom ordering (drag to reorder, sort by name, “pin to top,” etc.), it should show up in the release notes under Projects, so that’s a good place to check occasionally.
(OpenAI Help Center)
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If you want, I can suggest some naming/color conventions to fake an order (like prefixing “1-”, “2-” for your core projects).
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*PROJECTS* —>
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*CLICK “CREATE PROJECT”* —>
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*AFTER CREATING A “PROJECT”, A “PROJECT SECTION” IS LISTED IN “LEFT SIDEBAR”* —>
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*CLICK THE [“PROJECTS” HEADER] TO [SHOW/HIDE] THE ITEMS IN YOUR “PROJECTS SECTION”* —>
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*HOVER [POINTER] OVER A [PROJECT] IN [LEFT COLUMN] + CLICK THE “HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS”* —>
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“RENAME PROJECT” —>
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“DELETE PROJECT” —>
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How to use Projects in ChatGPT
Projects in ChatGPT offer a way to keep related chats, memories, custom instructions, and other reference material in neatly contained groups.
This way, you can jump between projects and have ChatGPT simultaneously context switch with you.
In the ChatGPT side panel, click the plus icon (+) next to Projects.
Enter a name for your project, and click Create project.
From here, you have a few options within your project
Main window of a new project in ChatGPT.
Start chatting.
Enter your prompt in the message box and chat with ChatGPT as you normally would.
Note: Chats in Projects are limited to using only GPT-4o.
Add knowledge sources.
Click Add files to upload any files you want ChatGPT to reference for that project.
Add custom instructions.
Click Add instructions, and enter your project-specific instructions.
You can view your project’s chat history in the side panel of ChatGPT
(click the project name to first expand it) or in the main area of an open project.
Main window of a project in ChatGPT with a list of project-specific chats.
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*👨🔬🕵️♀️🙇♀️*SKETCHES*🙇♂️👩🔬🕵️♂️*
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👈👈👈☜*-[CHATGPT] INSTRUCTIONS-* ☞ 👉👉👉
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💕💝💖💓🖤💙🖤💙🖤💙🖤❤️💚💛🧡❣️💞💔💘❣️🧡💛💚❤️🖤💜🖤💙🖤💙🖤💗💖💝💘
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*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥