ChatGPT Atlas Shut Down: Uninstall It and Delete Your History

First, the news that changes the answer: ChatGPT Atlas was shut down on August 9, 2026. OpenAI announced on July 9 that it was folding Atlas's browsing and agent features into ChatGPT and Codex, and the Mac browser stopped working a month later. So if you came here to delete your web browsing history in ChatGPT Atlas, there are now two jobs, not one. On the Mac, the app's local history stays on your disk until you remove the app and its data. In your ChatGPT account, your chats and ChatGPT memories are still there, and you delete those from ChatGPT's own settings. While Atlas still ran, the in-browser route was Settings → Web Browsing → Delete history, with a time range and check boxes for chats, web history, cookies and cached files; that is covered below for anyone holding an old copy.

Jake was one of the people who tried Atlas the week it came out in October 2025, liked the sidebar, used it for a month and forgot about it. When he read that it had closed, his first thought was the browsing history: was it still sitting somewhere? Ethan walked him through it in ten minutes. The local data was on the Mac, in the app's support folder; the browser memories had a 30-day server lifetime and were long gone; and his ChatGPT chats, including the ones started from Atlas, were in his ChatGPT account exactly where he had left them. Three places, three answers. This page goes through each.

If you never installed Atlas and only use ChatGPT on the web or the desktop app, the account section is the only part that applies to you.

What happened to ChatGPT Atlas

Atlas was OpenAI's own web browser, built on Chromium with ChatGPT in a sidebar and an agent mode that could click through websites for you. It launched for macOS on October 21, 2025. Versions for Windows, iPhone and Android were announced as coming and never shipped.

In 2026 OpenAI changed direction. It said it would combine Atlas with the ChatGPT desktop app and Codex, and on July 9, 2026 it announced the retirement date: Atlas stopped working on August 9, 2026. Its browser-agent features, including navigating sites, multiple tabs, downloads and signing in to accounts where supported, moved into ChatGPT and Codex. The advice was to export bookmarks and important links before the date, because tabs, bookmarks and history would not move across automatically.

For privacy, the shutdown means three things:

• Your local Atlas data, history, cookies and cache on the Mac, does not disappear by itself. It stays until you delete it.
• Your browser memories, the summaries Atlas could save to make ChatGPT smarter about your browsing, were held on OpenAI's servers for 30 days before deletion, so they have aged out.
• Your ChatGPT chats and ChatGPT memories are account data. They were never stored "in" Atlas, and they remain in your account until you delete them.

The Atlas timeline in one table

Date	What happened	What it means for your data
October 21, 2025	Atlas launches for macOS	History, cookies and cache start collecting on your Mac
March 2026	OpenAI says it will combine Atlas with the desktop app and Codex	A signal to start exporting
July 9, 2026	Retirement announced, with a one-month window	Last chance to export bookmarks and passwords from a working app
August 9, 2026	Atlas stops working	No new browser memories; local data stays on the Mac
About September 8, 2026	30 days after the last possible browser memory	Server-side browser memories have expired
Today	Nothing more changes on its own	Your Mac's Atlas folder and your account's chats remain until you delete them

Where your Atlas data lives now

Data	Where it is	Still there?	How to delete
Browsing history, cookies, cache	Your Mac	Yes, until removed	Delete the app and its support files
Saved passwords	Your Mac (and anywhere you exported them)	Yes, until removed	Same; change any password you are unsure about
Bookmarks	Your Mac, or Chrome if you exported them	Yes	Delete with the app; manage exported copies in Chrome
Browser memories	OpenAI servers	No; 30-day retention has passed	Nothing to do
Chats started in Atlas	Your ChatGPT account	Yes	ChatGPT → delete chats, or Data controls → Delete all chats
ChatGPT memories	Your ChatGPT account	Yes	Settings → Personalization → Memory → Manage

How to uninstall ChatGPT Atlas from your Mac and delete its history

1. Quit Atlas if it is open. If it no longer launches, that is expected.
2. Open Finder → Applications, drag ChatGPT Atlas to the Trash, and empty the Trash.
3. Remove the leftover data: in Finder choose Go → Go to Folder, type ~/Library/Application Support, and delete the folder belonging to Atlas (look for "Atlas" or "OpenAI" in the name). Do the same in ~/Library/Caches. These folders hold the history, cookies and cache. Atlas's internal name is com.openai.atlas, so folders with that name are the ones to remove.
4. Check System Settings → General → Login Items and remove any Atlas entry.
5. If you installed Atlas with Homebrew, remove it that way instead: run brew list --cask to find its name, then brew uninstall --zap --cask followed by that name. The --zap option also removes its support files.

If you are not comfortable deleting folders in Library by hand, an uninstaller app that finds leftovers does the same job. Either way, once the support folder is gone, the local history is gone. Before you delete, save anything you still want: if a page in your Atlas history mattered, open it in another browser and keep a copy, the way the offline webpage guide describes.

Delete chats and memories from your ChatGPT account

This is the part that still matters after the shutdown, because it lives in your account and follows you to every device.

Delete ChatGPT memories

1. Open ChatGPT on the web or in the app and click your profile → Settings.
2. Go to Personalization → Memory and click Manage.
3. Delete individual memories, or use the option to clear all. You can also switch memory off entirely on the same page.

Delete chats

Delete single chats from the sidebar (the three dots next to a chat → Delete). To remove everything, go to Settings → Data controls → Delete all chats. Deleted chats are removed from your history straight away and are scheduled for deletion from OpenAI's systems under its retention policy.

Export your data first, if you want a copy

Before deleting chats, you can download everything in your account: Settings → Data controls → Export data. OpenAI emails a download link with your chats in a file you can keep. Deletion cannot be undone, so export first if any conversation matters.

Check the training setting

Under Settings → Data controls, Improve the model for everyone controls whether your conversations can be used for training. Atlas had a separate "include web browsing" option for browsing content, which was off by default; with Atlas gone, the account-level setting is the one that counts.

If your copy of Atlas still opens: the in-browser delete history

Some people still have a copy that launches but cannot browse. If the settings open, this is how Atlas deleted history while it was supported:

1. Open Atlas Settings and go to Web Browsing.
2. Click Delete next to Delete history.
3. Choose a time range: Last 15 minutes, Last hour, Last 24 hours, Last 7 days, Last 4 weeks or All time.
4. Check what to delete: Chats, Web History, Cookies & other site data, Cached images and files.
5. Confirm.

Two details explain what that did. Deleting Web History also deleted the browser memories built from it, and the browser refreshed its memories to leave the deleted pages out. Deleting history did not delete your ChatGPT chats or ChatGPT memories unless you checked Chats, because those belong to your account. After the in-app delete, still remove the app as above; deleting history inside a retired app does not uninstall it.

What browser memories were, and why they are already gone

Browser memories were an optional Atlas feature that let ChatGPT remember key details from pages you visited, so it could, for example, find "that article about laptop batteries I read last week". Atlas summarized pages on OpenAI's servers, discarded the original page content immediately, and removed the filtered summaries within seven days; the memories themselves were held for 30 days and then deleted. They were separate from ChatGPT memories, which you manage in ChatGPT settings.

Because the last day anything could be added was August 9, 2026, the 30-day window means browser memories had fully expired by mid-September 2026. There is nothing to request or delete. If you are unsure whether any browsing details made it into your regular ChatGPT memories (for example because you told ChatGPT something while browsing), review that list in Personalization → Memory.

What replaced Atlas, and how its privacy works

OpenAI moved Atlas's agent features into the ChatGPT desktop app and Codex, and offers ChatGPT inside Chrome through its extension and sidebar. Those products use your ChatGPT account's data controls: the memory settings, chat history and training setting covered above. They do not keep a separate browsing history the way Atlas did; your regular browser keeps that, and you clear it the usual way (Ctrl + Shift + Delete in Chrome or Edge on Windows, Cmd + Shift + Delete on a Mac).

If what you liked about Atlas was an assistant that reads the page with you, Microsoft Edge's Copilot sidebar and Chrome's built-in Gemini features do similar things with their own privacy settings; the Copilot history guide covers clearing that one. And if you would rather your prompts never leave your computer at all, local models are now practical on ordinary PCs; the run AI locally series is the starting point.

What the Atlas shutdown teaches about AI browsers

• Local data outlives the product. When an app is retired, its history and saved passwords stay on your disk. Uninstall properly.
• Account data outlives the app. Chats and memories belong to your account, not to whichever app created them. Review them in the account settings.
• Export early. OpenAI gave a month's notice. Bookmarks and passwords are easy to export while an app runs and awkward after.
• Clearing history is not the same as privacy. Sites can still recognize a browser without history through fingerprinting; the fingerprinting guide explains the difference.

Jake's Atlas folder is gone from his Mac, his ChatGPT memories are reviewed and trimmed, and he exported his three useful bookmarks into Chrome on the last week before the shutdown, mostly by luck. Ethan's takeaway was simpler: every app you stop using still knows what it knew. Atlas lasted less than ten months. Its history would have lasted forever on Jake's disk if he had not gone looking. If you tried Atlas and forgot about it, nothing bad has happened; you just have one folder and one settings page to visit.

Revision note. Written October 1, 2026, after Atlas was discontinued. If you tried it in its first weeks and forgot about it, you are in the majority, and the cleanup takes ten minutes.