ChatGPT Pulse (2026): What It Was, Why OpenAI Retired It, and How to Get the Morning Brief for Your Business

ChatGPT Pulse: the short answer

As of September 2026, ChatGPT Pulse no longer exists. OpenAI previewed it for Pro users on mobile on September 25, 2025, brought it to the web on October 29, 2025, and then wrote in its June 17, 2026 release notes that "Pulse is being sunset as proactive updates move into scheduled tasks," with Pro users keeping it for 14 more days. The daily-brief idea survived; it now lives in scheduled tasks, which are available on Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Everything below comes from OpenAI's announcement, release notes, help center, and pricing pages, read on September 15, 2026.

If you searched for Pulse because you want ChatGPT to show up each morning with what matters for your business, that's still doable. It's just a different feature with a different name, and the setup decisions are where owners get it wrong. I install these tools for owner-led companies, so the second half of this post is the part I'd actually hand a client.

What ChatGPT Pulse was

OpenAI's announcement described Pulse as ChatGPT starting the conversation. Each night it "synthesizes information from your memory, chat history, and direct feedback" and delivered a set of visual cards the next day. Tap a card and it expanded into a normal chat. Skip it and it was gone: "Each update is available for that day only unless you save it as a chat or ask a follow-up question."

Three details from that page matter for what came after:

• It ran on memory. Pulse only had material to work with if memory and chat history were on. That's still true of the replacement.
• Gmail and Google Calendar were optional inputs. OpenAI said those integrations "are off by default and can be turned on or off anytime in settings." With Calendar connected, it might draft a meeting agenda or flag a trip.
• You steered it. A "curate" button let you ask for specific things in future editions, and thumbs up or down trained it over time. Topics also passed through safety checks.

OpenAI was candid that it was a preview: "Pulse is a preview and won't always get things right," including tips for projects you'd already finished.

Which plans ever had ChatGPT Pulse

So for most owners the honest answer is that Pulse was a $200-a-month Pro feature you never had. The good news is the thing that replaced it is on the $20 tiers.

Why OpenAI retired Pulse

The June 17, 2026 release note is short. Under "Update on Pulse" it says: "Pulse is being sunset as proactive updates move into scheduled tasks. Pro users will continue to have access for 14 days from today. To keep receiving daily updates, you can ask ChatGPT to schedule a daily briefing based on your interests and past chats."

The same day's notes describe the scheduled tasks overhaul it folded into: a Scheduled page in the sidebar, faster and more reliable runs, time windows like morning or afternoon, and monitoring tasks that "search the web and check connected apps for changes and notify users only when there is something worth reporting." That last one is Pulse's job description.

OpenAI didn't publish a reason beyond consolidation, so I won't invent one. My read: a feed you can't schedule, can't share, and can't point at a specific job is a consumer toy. A task you can schedule, share, and trigger from an inbox is a work tool. They kept the work tool.

How to get the morning brief now: scheduled tasks

Scheduled tasks are the replacement, and they're on every plan in some form. From OpenAI's help center, updated within the last month:

To set one up: open Scheduled in the sidebar, or just ask ChatGPT in a chat to do something on a schedule. It confirms the task, and you manage it from the Scheduled page (pause, resume, edit, delete). Notifications come by push, email, or both under Settings, then Notifications.

Event-triggered tasks are the part Pulse never had. Connect Gmail, Slack, or GitHub under Settings, then Apps, and describe the trigger: a new email from a specific sender, a message in a channel you've added @ChatGPT to. They can run up to 30 times an hour and 720 times a day across all your triggered tasks. They run inside ChatGPT Work, so they draw on the same allowance I covered in ChatGPT Work for business.

Two limits to know before you build the brief. Tasks can't run more than once an hour. And OpenAI says a task created inside a project "cannot access uploaded files or files stored in that project," so the brief can't read the price sheet you uploaded to a project. Connect the source app instead.

What to hand the brief, and what to keep out

Here's the split I use with clients. The goal is a five-minute read at 7am, not a second inbox.

Hand it:

• Your calendar. Today's meetings, who's on them, and a one-line prep note each. This was Pulse's best trick and it still works with Calendar connected.
• A filtered inbox. Not "summarize my email." Set a trigger for messages from your top ten customers or anything with "invoice" or "quote" in the subject. Gmail tasks can filter by sender or subject.
• A monitor. One task that checks a competitor's pricing page or your own site for changes and only speaks up when something moved.
• A recurring number. If your bookkeeping or CRM is a connected app, ask for the same three metrics every Monday. Same format every time, so you notice when it changes.

Keep out:

• Anything you'd need to approve. Tasks that send a message or change external data may require approval, and the task pauses until you review it. A brief that stalls on a permission prompt is worse than no brief.
• Secrets in the task text. OpenAI's own guidance: don't put passwords, account numbers, health information, or financial details in a task's title or instructions. Task links show the full instructions to anyone who opens them.
• Customer data on a personal plan. More on that next.

Every one of these is a normal chat prompt with a schedule attached, so test it as a chat first. If the one-off answer is useless, the daily version will be useless at 7am every day.

Privacy and data controls

Pulse ran on memory, and so does a good brief, which makes the plan you run it on a data decision, not a feature decision.

• Free, Go, Plus, Pro: OpenAI's pricing page lists "Content is used to train our models" with an opt-out available. You can also turn memory off, and since June 12, 2026 there's a "Delete and turn off memory" control on the memory summary page.
• Business: "OpenAI won't train on your workspace's data." Each member has their own chat history, other members don't see it, and admins' usage analytics don't include chat transcripts. Business task links only open for members of the same workspace.
• Shared tasks on any plan: a shared link carries the title, instructions, and schedule, but not your chat history, memories, or connected app credentials. Recipients connect their own apps.

If the brief reads customer email, run it on a Business seat. Standard seats are $20 a user a month billed annually or $25 monthly, with a two-seat minimum; the full breakdown is on ChatGPT Business pricing. A briefing task also spends the same metered allowance as everything else agentic, so if you're already near the wall, ChatGPT usage limits explains which meter it hits.

The brief I'd actually set up

One task, weekdays, 6:45am, in the chat where you keep your business context. Something like:

Every weekday at 6:45am: check my Google Calendar for today and list each meeting with attendees and one line of prep. Check Gmail for anything from the last 24 hours from [customer list] or with "quote," "invoice," or "cancel" in the subject, and summarize each in one line with a suggested reply. Keep the whole thing under 200 words. Don't send anything.

That last sentence is the whole safety model. Read, summarize, recommend. You send.

If you want the brief to know your business rather than just your inbox, that context belongs in a project with instructions and files, and the brief runs alongside it rather than inside it. The difference between those two containers is the subject of ChatGPT Projects vs custom GPTs, which matters more now that OpenAI has said it plans to retire custom GPTs.

Pulse was a nice demo of ChatGPT coming to you. Scheduled tasks are the version you can run a business on, provided you tell it exactly what to read and never let it send.