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Canvases

A visual workspace in ChatGPT for organizing notes, summaries, and outputs.

In plain terms

Canvases are a feature within ChatGPT that act like a digital whiteboard. You can use them to arrange and interact with different pieces of information, like text notes, summaries generated by ChatGPT, or even images.

Think of it like a digital corkboard where you can pin up your thoughts, paste in AI-generated content, and move things around to make sense of complex topics or projects. It helps you keep related information together in one place.

The expert version

Canvases provide a persistent, interactive visual workspace within ChatGPT. They allow users to organize, connect, and manipulate various AI outputs and user inputs, such as text, images, and transcribed audio. This feature aims to enhance productivity and facilitate complex task management by offering a more structured and visual approach to interacting with AI models.

The underlying mechanism likely involves a combination of state management for user-added content and integration with ChatGPT's core generation and understanding capabilities. Tradeoffs include potential complexity for new users and the computational overhead of maintaining and rendering these visual states.

Why it matters now

AI tools are evolving beyond simple chat interfaces. Companies are exploring visual and interactive 'canvases' to provide richer user experiences and better ways to organize and act on AI-generated information.

Where it shows up 2 items, newest first
How each company uses it
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is moving towards more visual and interactive developer experiences, suggesting a move beyond chat to canvas-like interfaces.
OpenAI ChatGPT
OpenAI's ChatGPT now includes a canvas feature that acts as a digital whiteboard for organizing notes, summaries, and outputs from voice inputs.
Related terms

WorkspacesDigital WhiteboardsAI AssistantsNote TakingInformation OrganizationProductivity Tools

Often confused with
Whiteboard
A physical or digital surface for drawing or writing, typically used
Notebook
A collection of pages bound together, used for writing notes; digitall
Canvas (graphics)
In computer graphics, a canvas is an area where pixels can be
Origin

Canvases were introduced by OpenAI as a new feature for ChatGPT, aiming to provide a more interactive and organized way for users to work with AI. Source ↗

Try this about 5 minutes

Open ChatGPT and look for the 'Canvases' option. Try creating a new canvas, pasting in a previous ChatGPT conversation summary, and adding a few text notes around it. See how you can rearrange these elements to create a more organized view of the information.

Try it: Playbook entries that use thisPlaybook →

The Playbook: reusable how-tos, prompts, configs and tips pulled out of the news.

Questions people ask

What is the main purpose of ChatGPT Canvases?
The main purpose is to provide a visual and interactive space within ChatGPT for users to organize notes, summaries, and other AI outputs, making it easier to manage complex information.
Can I share my Canvases?
Information on sharing capabilities may vary. Typically, such features are designed for personal organization, but specific sharing options would be detailed in ChatGPT's documentation.

First seen on Subvolts Sep 6, 2026. Updated Oct 1, 2026. Written by an AI model from the items above and reviewed against them weekly; report an error.