How to do it
Closing the app or the browser deletes nothing: the chats live on your account, not in the open window. Recovering them is a matter of finding them again and then putting the AI "back on track."
- Reopen the tool and check that you're logged in with the same account you were using before. A vanished chat is almost always a session done with another account or without logging in.
- Look at the sidebar: the conversations are in date order, the most recent at the top. Scroll until you recognize it by the title.
- If you don't find it, use the internal search. Almost all tools have a magnifying-glass icon above the chat list: type a word or phrase you know you used in that conversation.
- Open it and read the last answers to remember the point. Then put the AI back in context with an explicit request.
Feedback: if the AI, in answering, refers to what you'd said before, the thread is resumed. If instead it answers into the void as if to a new question, the conversation is too long and has "forgotten" the start: use the prompt below to stitch it back together.
Before continuing, summarize in five lines where we'd got to in this conversation: the goal, the decisions already made, and the next step. Then let's resume from there.
A concrete example
Sara was planning with the AI the weekly menu and the shopping list for a family of five. The phone rings, she closes everything, and in the evening she reopens the app from another device. The chat isn't at the top because in the meantime she opened others. She taps the magnifying glass, types "weekly menu," and the conversation pops up. She reopens it, but the AI seems confused about the allergies she'd indicated at the start. Sara pastes the recap prompt: the AI reconstructs the goal, the constraints, and the list already made, and they resume from the missing day without starting over.
When it does NOT work (and how to fix it)
If the chat isn't in the sidebar
You're almost certainly using a different account or you've logged out. Check at the top or bottom which email is connected. If you have multiple accounts (a personal one and a work one, or a Google one and one with a direct email), log in with the right one: the chats of one account don't appear on the other.
If the AI has lost the thread of the discussion
Very long conversations exceed the tool's working memory, which starts losing the first messages. It's not a malfunction: it's the limit of the context. The remedy is the recap prompt above, or, if the chat is unmanageable, asking for a complete summary, copying it, and starting over in a new, leaner chat.
If you switch devices and don't see the chats updated
Syncing between devices can lag by a few minutes. Close and reopen the app, or pull the list down to refresh it (the gesture of dragging downward, like refreshing your mail). If still nothing, log out and back into the account.
A tip from someone who actually uses it
Give a clear title to the conversations you think you'll resume. Many tools let you rename a chat: a name like "Weekly family menu" is found instantly, while the automatic title ("Meal planning and nutritional considerations...") blends in with the others. Thirty seconds of order save you ten minutes of searching next time.
Frequently asked questions
If I close the browser do I lose what the AI was writing?
If the answer was already complete, no: it stays saved in the chat. If the AI was halfway through a long answer when you closed, that answer may stay truncated. Reopen the chat and write "continue": it resumes from where it was interrupted.
Do chats stay forever or expire on their own?
They don't expire on their own from inactivity: they stay until you delete them or close the account. The myth is that closing the app "resets" everything. It's not so: the only thing lost by closing is what you hadn't sent yet. Everything else is on your account, ready for reopening.