The more I use Bing Chat in my daily life the more I lament that it's currently missing one big feature that ChatGPT has. And whatever else is planned for Bing Chat in the coming weeks and months, I need this more than anything. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
I need a history of my chat threads to synchronize across my devices. And I need it yesterday.
This gap in the feature set is mostly what keeps sending me to ChatGPT for anything I'm going to need to refer back to. Whether I'm on mobile or desktop, or I can get at my ChatGPT history. Bing Chat desperately needs this.
This missing feature is holding Bing Chat back
On ChatGPT, any time you create a new thread, it automatically gets saved to your account. Everything you've previously used it for is easily accessible from the sidebar for reference, or for you to continue with new messages.
It sounds so simple, and it is, but it's a huge part of the experience for those of us using these generative AI tools daily. ChatGPT doesn't have an official mobile app yet, but using it in the browser works fine and, as on desktop, all your chat threads are automatically saved.
I use Bing Chat a lot on my phone. But getting anything I want to keep for later off it is a chore. There's no way to save it, no built-in way to export as plain text, it feels like something that should have been included from day one. Especially since to use Bing Chat you're using it with your Microsoft Account anyway.
Microsoft has the tools at its disposal to take this even further, too. Chat history is the first, and most immediate thing, but it sure would be great to be able to share to Microsoft To Do, or Outlook, or any of the other Microsoft 365 connected apps.
By virtue of being connected to the Internet, Bing Chat has a huge advantage over ChatGPT. But not being able to save your chat threads makes it less useful in a number of ways, which is a shame. It's an amazing research tool, but at the same time, quite limited.
A workaround on desktop with this extension
There is at least a workaround if you use Bing Chat in your desktop browser. The extension Bing Chat History can be added to any Chromium-based browser. It doesn't integrate directly into Bing Chat as your history does on ChatGPT, but it does the same thing.
Once connected to your Microsoft Account, anything you talk about with Bing Chat will be saved into the extension for future reference, bookmarking and even exporting. It has its limitations, though, for example, any Bing Chat use in the Edge Sidebar won't be saved. You can only save threads from the Bing Chat webpage.
But it's a start and it gives us this much needed functionality that's still missing from Bing Chat. Of the features teased to be coming soon, we've heard about memory, but nothing yet about history. Whatever else may be planned, I really hope we'll be able to have this one ChatGPT feature really soon.
