Creating a Scheduled Task overwrites a manually assigned ChatGPT conversation title

Open 💬 0 comments Opened Aug 10, 2026 by mjnbrn

What issue are you seeing?

_This issue affects Chat in the new unified ChatGPT desktop app on Windows, not the Codex experience. I reached this repository through the troubleshooting/reporting path linked from the ChatGPT desktop app's Help menu._

Creating a Scheduled Task/reminder from an existing ChatGPT conversation whose title I have manually set causes ChatGPT to replace that manually assigned conversation title.

I have reproduced this behavior multiple times, including one reproduction where I captured screenshots showing the title change becoming visible in different UI surfaces at different moments.

Most recent captured example:

Manually assigned conversation title: Mission Control
Scheduled Task created: Make Food
Resulting conversation title: Make Food

No request was made to rename the conversation.

The screenshots capture an intermediate state where the Recents/sidebar entry had already changed to Make Food while the main conversation header still displayed Mission Control. Shortly afterward, without any user rename action, the main conversation header also displayed Make Food.

The screenshots establish that the new title became visible in the Recents/sidebar before becoming visible in the conversation header.

This may indicate that a conversation-title change is being propagated asynchronously between UI surfaces. However, the screenshots alone do not establish where the title change originates, whether it occurs client-side or server-side, or whether the Scheduled Task name is directly used as the replacement conversation title.

What can be directly observed is that creating the Scheduled Task is followed by the manually assigned conversation title changing to the task's name without a user rename action.

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Open an existing conversation in the ChatGPT desktop app on Windows.
Manually assign the conversation a custom title, for example:

Mission Control

Continue using that conversation normally.
From within the same conversation, ask ChatGPT to create a reminder/Scheduled Task. In the most recent captured reproduction, I sent:

I already renamed it. but that's ok. I need you to remind me at 21:00 tonight to make food.

ChatGPT successfully creates a Scheduled Task named:

Make Food

Observe the conversation title in the Recents/sidebar.
Observe the conversation title in the main conversation header.

Observed sequence in the captured reproduction:

Mission Control
→ create Scheduled Task Make Food
→ Recents/sidebar conversation title becomes Make Food
→ main conversation header still temporarily shows Mission Control
→ main conversation header subsequently becomes Make Food

No conversation rename was requested during these steps.

I previously encountered the same behavior in another reproduction. The conversation had been manually titled Mission Control. After I asked ChatGPT to create a Scheduled Task named Review SleepGuard Logs, the existing conversation title was automatically replaced. I submitted product feedback about that occurrence at the time.

One earlier occurrence was observed at approximately 2026-08-09 19:33 EDT.

That timestamp represents when I observed the title change and began composing a report about it. I paused before submitting the message to locate and review the public openai/codex issue tracker, so the eventual message submission timestamp is later than the timestamp at which the title change was actually observed.

What is the expected behavior?

Once a user manually assigns a conversation title, creating a Scheduled Task from that conversation should leave the conversation title unchanged.

The Scheduled Task may have its own independently generated or user-editable name.

For example:

Conversation: Mission Control
Scheduled Task: Make Food

should remain two distinct names.

A manually assigned conversation title should have precedence over automatic title generation.

Specifically:

A user-assigned conversation title should not be overwritten by automatic title generation. Creating, editing, running, pausing, or deleting a Scheduled Task associated with that conversation should not alter its user-assigned title unless the user explicitly requests the rename.

Automatic title generation could continue normally for conversations that have never been manually renamed.

Additional information

Why this matters:

Scheduled Tasks are useful specifically because users want ChatGPT to remember something for them and surface it later.

Conversation titles are also organizational metadata that users rely on to find persistent or long-running conversations.

When creating a reminder changes a manually assigned conversation title, these two organizational features interfere with each other. The user must:

Notice that the conversation was renamed.
Remember what its previous title was.
Manually restore it.
Potentially repeat this every time a new Scheduled Task is created from that conversation.

For long-running conversations that may contain multiple Scheduled Tasks over time, this makes manually organizing conversations unreliable.

I could not find a public openai/codex issue documenting this exact reproduction:

manually assigned ChatGPT conversation title
→ create Scheduled Task
→ manually assigned title replaced

However, there are public reports concerning adjacent conversation-title persistence and precedence behavior:

openai/codex#9471 reports conversations being automatically/arbitrarily renamed.
openai/codex#12564 concerns persistence of custom conversation titles.
openai/codex#24289 describes the desired behavior that automatic title generation should not overwrite a title the user has already manually set.
openai/codex#16405 documents a separate title-state/persistence inconsistency.
An OpenAI Developer Community feature request has separately requested protection for manually assigned ChatGPT conversation titles from subsequent automatic title generation.

These are included only as related behavior and design precedent. I am not asserting that they share the same implementation, trigger, or root cause as the Scheduled Task behavior reported here.

Environment / reproducibility:

Product: ChatGPT desktop app
OS: Windows
Surface affected: Chat
Existing conversation with a manually assigned title
Scheduled Task created by asking ChatGPT for a reminder from within that conversation
Behavior reproduced multiple times
Latest captured reproduction:
Manual conversation title: Mission Control
Scheduled Task name: Make Food
Resulting conversation title: Make Food
Two screenshots capture the title transition across the conversation header and Recents/sidebar
No conversation rename was requested during the reproduction

View original on GitHub ↗