Chrome browser extension to easily export/download either all or only new/updated ChatGPT conversations as Markdown files optimized for Obsidian.
Each file contains frontmatter designed to make it more useful (especially in Obsidian) and also contains a direct link to that conversation in ChatGPT. And if a conversation is part of one of your ChatGPT projects, a corresponding tag in the frontmatter will automatically "link" all conversations of a project together.
Despite the added frontmatter, the combined size of all .md files GPT Exporter downloads is 3-4 times smaller than the one giant (almost unusable) file the ChatGPT website gives you with their export. Because the GPT Exporter ignores all the useless crap.
This also means:
Some of those lean but context-rich Markdown files could also be used for giving context to ChatGPT or other LLMs when you start a new project etc. (Leaner is better because context-window bloat tends to degrade LLM performance.)
This extension is deliberately designed to work slowly and will also make a random pause between 2 and 4 minutes after downloading every 100 conversations. This is to avoid any potential issues like rate limiting that ChatGPT might implement.
As a result, on average it downloads only about 10 conversations per minute. So, if you have 1,500 conversations in total, it could take 2.5 hours to download all.
During the download process you should NOT open new ChatGPT windows/tabs and should NOT work in existing ChatGPT tabs. Just pause all of your ChatGPT activity until the download is finished.
I recommend that you ONLY enable this browser extension for downloading new or updated ChatGPT threads/conversations (or downloading all initially) and then disable the GPT Exporter extension afterwards. Because otherwise it will make the loading of ChatGPT pages slower. It will remember all the settings when you re-enable it later. GPT Exporter will also remember which of your ChatGPT conversations were downloaded when. So, if you update any of those chats later (by continuing the conversation there), the updated conversations will be downloaded next time you click "Export New/Updated" button.
During the download process you can open a new browser window and do any non-ChatGPT tasks there.
If you use Projects in ChatGPT (like I do) to organize things, GPT Exporter will automatically create folders with those project names and put all the corresponding .md files inside.
If you export no more than 3 conversations, then the export will be separate .md files. And if it's more than 3, then the export will be one .zip file that contains all the files.
Remember:
If you make any changes in one of the downloaded files, all those changes will be overwritten later IF you later continue that conversation in ChatGPT and then download that updated chat. Essentially, GPT Exporter creates an extremely usable backup of your ChatGPT conversations. Especially when combined with Obsidian.
The ChatGPT website also gives you an option to download all your conversations. But they bunch it together into one single file and format it in a way that makes the whole thing almost useless. GPT Exporter makes this "backup" super useful. Just the great search functionality of Obsidian makes these downloaded conversations a thousand times more useful than the crappy search you get on the ChatGPT website.
If you're unfamiliar with installing unpacked Chrome browser extensions, here's how to do it:
First, click the Code button at the top of this page (https://github.com/WebDevBooster/gpt-exporter), click "Download ZIP" and unzip it to a place where you can leave it on your computer forever.
Then:
- Click the 3 dots in Chrome, then Extensions > Manage extensions. That gets you to the
chrome://extensions/page. - Turn on the Developer mode toggle in the upper right corner.
- Click the Load unpacked button in the upper left corner.
- Navigate to the unzipped folder, click it and click the Select folder button.
That's it.
The GPT Exporter extension is now installed and active.
Go to a ChatGPT tab, reload it and you're good to go.
You can temporarily or permanently pin this extension to your Chrome navbar by clicking the extensions icon in the upper right and clicking the pin icon next to GPT Explorer there.
Remember to de-activate it (after downloading your stuff from ChatGPT) by clicking the toggle in the lower right corner of the GPT Exporter extension card (on the chrome://extensions/ page).