OpenAI has quietly enhanced the ChatGPT app with three meaningful updates that improve how users interact with the AI, from controlling response effort to navigating complex conversations. The changes include a hidden gesture for adjusting intelligence levels, a new table-of-contents feature for longer chats, and refinements to the GPT-5.5 Instant model that make responses feel more conversational and less formulaic.

What's the Hidden Gesture Feature in ChatGPT?

OpenAI introduced a gesture-based shortcut that lets mobile users set how much computational effort ChatGPT should spend on a response before sending. By long-pressing the send arrow icon on the ChatGPT mobile app, users can now choose between three intelligence levels: Instant, Thinking, and Extended. This feature eliminates the need to navigate through menus to switch models for a single message, making it faster to request deeper analysis when the quick response doesn't deliver the results you need.

The intelligence level options available depend on your OpenAI subscription tier. This design choice reflects OpenAI's broader push toward an automatic model picker that adapts to user needs without requiring manual intervention.

How Can You Better Navigate Long ChatGPT Conversations?

OpenAI rolled out a table-of-contents feature for the web version of ChatGPT that automatically appears in conversations with five or more responses. The feature displays as a set of lines on the middle right section of the conversation window. When you hover over these lines, the full table of contents expands, allowing you to click and jump directly to specific topics within the same chat. This solves a common frustration: conversations that start as quick questions often evolve into multi-topic discussions, making it difficult to find earlier points without scrolling endlessly.

While the table-of-contents feature currently exists only on ChatGPT's web app, OpenAI has not ruled out bringing it to mobile and desktop versions in the future.

Steps to Use ChatGPT's New Features Effectively

• Long-Press for Effort Control: On mobile, long-press the send arrow icon before submitting a message to select Instant, Thinking, or Extended mode based on how much analysis you need.
• Hover for Navigation: On the web app, hover over the lines icon on the right side of conversations with 5+ responses to reveal the table of contents and jump between topics.
• Monitor Response Style: Pay attention to how GPT-5.5 Instant now formats answers, which should feel more natural and less bullet-heavy than previous versions.

Why Did OpenAI Update GPT-5.5 Instant?

On May 29, 2026, OpenAI released an updated version of GPT-5.5 Instant, the default model most ChatGPT users interact with daily. The original GPT-5.5 Instant launched on May 5, 2026, but OpenAI identified specific areas for improvement. The new version addresses three key issues: reducing excessive bullet points and overly long responses, improving factuality and reducing sycophancy (the tendency to agree with users even when incorrect), and enhancing multilingual performance across different languages.

"We're updating GPT-5.5 Instant in ChatGPT and the API to improve response style and quality. It's now easier to read, more natural in everyday conversations, and better paced in practical help tasks, with fewer overly long or bullet-heavy responses," OpenAI stated.

OpenAI, Official Statement

The refinement reflects OpenAI's focus on making AI responses feel less robotic and more aligned with how humans naturally communicate. Rather than defaulting to structured lists for every answer, the updated model now judges when bullet points are genuinely helpful versus when prose flows better.

What Do These Changes Mean for ChatGPT Users?

These three updates represent OpenAI's incremental approach to improving the user experience without overhauling the core product. The gesture control gives power users faster access to different response modes, the table-of-contents feature reduces friction in managing complex conversations, and the GPT-5.5 Instant refinement makes everyday interactions feel more natural. Together, they signal that OpenAI is paying attention to how people actually use ChatGPT and iterating based on real-world feedback.

The updates also hint at OpenAI's broader product strategy: rather than waiting for major model releases, the company is shipping smaller, focused improvements that compound over time. This approach keeps ChatGPT competitive against rivals like Claude and other conversational AI tools that are also rapidly evolving their user interfaces and response quality.