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How to search all your ChatGPT history (and open conversations.json)

Updated 2026-10-28.

Short answer: download your data from ChatGPT (Settings → Data controls → Export data), then import the .zip into an archive that can search it. AI Chat Exporter Pro does this on your computer: search by word or exact phrase and filter by date, app and tag.

What is in the ChatGPT export

chat.html: every conversation on one long page. You can open it in a browser and use Ctrl+F, but large histories make it slow.
conversations.json: the raw data. Each conversation stores its messages as a tree (so edited and regenerated replies are kept), which is why it is hard to read directly.

Search it with AI Chat Exporter Pro

Add AI Chat Exporter to Chrome and open "Archive & bulk export" from its menu.
Drop the .zip from OpenAI (or just conversations.json) on the page. Claude exports and Gemini Takeout files can go in the same archive.
Search by word or exact phrase, filter by app, date and tag, and bulk export what you find to a Markdown ZIP, a Word ZIP or one PDF.

Pro is $7/month or $49/year, with a full refund within 14 days of a payment. The archive is stored in your browser on your computer; nothing is uploaded.

ChatGPT's own sidebar search also finds past chats by keyword. A local archive adds exact-phrase search, filters, tags, bulk export, and chats from Claude and Gemini in one place.

Add to Chrome — free