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github-actions[bot] edited this page Sep 3, 2026 · 2 revisions

Is OpenAI Operator still available?

No. Operator was shut down on 31 August 2025, about seven months after it launched. The capability moved into ChatGPT agent, which was itself removed in early August 2026. Atlas, OpenAI's standalone AI browser, shut down on 9 August 2026. As of this page's writing (September 2026), nothing OpenAI offers carries the Operator name, and the closest living equivalents are agentic browsing inside the ChatGPT desktop app and Chrome extension, the ChatGPT Work agent, and a developer-only computer-use API.

That is the short answer. The rest of this page is the verified timeline, because the churn confused a lot of people, and then the practical part: what someone who wants that capability today can actually use.

A note on who is telling you this: this page lives on the wiki of AIHawk, an open-source agent in the same space, which appears once in the alternatives section below with that conflict declared.

The timeline, date by date

Every row was checked against OpenAI's own pages or mainstream reporting on 2026-09-03.

Date Event
23 January 2025 Operator announced as a research preview.
1 February 2025 Available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers in the US.
July 2025 ChatGPT agent launches, merging Operator's "visual, GUI-based actions" with Deep Research; Operator's deprecation is announced.
31 August 2025 Standalone Operator shuts down.
October 2025 Atlas launches: a Chromium-based AI browser, macOS first.
9 July 2026 ChatGPT Work launches: an agent for multi-step work across apps and files.
Early August 2026 ChatGPT agent mode removed; OpenAI's help pages direct users to ChatGPT Work. Users on the OpenAI forum note it arrived without an advance deprecation notice.
9 August 2026 Atlas shuts down; its agentic browsing folds into the ChatGPT desktop app, the ChatGPT Chrome extension, and Codex.

Three product generations in nineteen months, each replacing the last. If you built a workflow on any of them, you have already migrated twice.

What OpenAI offers today instead

Agentic browsing in ChatGPT. The Atlas shutdown notice says its browser-based agentic work moved into the ChatGPT desktop app and the ChatGPT Chrome extension. This is the nearest thing to Operator's original shape that OpenAI still ships: the assistant can browse and act inside a browser context, under your subscription.

ChatGPT Work. Launched 9 July 2026, described by OpenAI and press coverage as an agent that gathers context across your apps and files and returns finished documents, spreadsheets and reports, staying with a project for hours. It is aimed at deliverables, not at interactively clicking through an arbitrary website. The most-viewed forum thread about the agent mode removal makes exactly that complaint: Work does not replicate "spawned a virtual computer, opened a real browser, visually interpret rendered websites, clicked through interfaces".

The computer-use API. For developers, OpenAI's computer use tool in the Responses API drives a click-type-scroll loop over screenshots. It left its research-preview phase: the current guide documents it as a generally available tool (named computer) driven by current models such as gpt-5.6, with a migration path from the old computer-use-preview model. It is a building block, not a product: you supply the browser or VM it acts on.

Whether any of these is "Operator, still available" depends on which half of Operator you wanted: the hosted convenience survives in ChatGPT's browsing mode; the watch-it-click-through-any-site agent, per OpenAI's own users, does not have a direct heir inside ChatGPT today.

If you want what Operator did, today

The capability did not die with the product; it moved out into the rest of the field.

Another vendor's browser agent. Claude in Chrome became generally available for paid Claude plans on 26 August 2026 and drives the Chrome you already have. The architectural comparison with Operator's approach is on OpenAI Operator vs Claude computer use.

The open-source route. Several maintained open projects do the describe-a-task, watch-the-browser-work loop on your own machine with your own model key: browser-use (~112k stars), Skyvern (~23k), Agent S3 (~12k) for whole-desktop tasks, and AIHawk (~30k), our own, whose particular bet is driving a Firefox patched at the source level so the browser reads as a normal desktop machine rather than an automation build. The repo-by-repo survey with licenses and trade-offs is Open-source Operator-style agents, and the full hosted-plus-open landscape is OpenAI Operator alternatives.

One thing to carry over from the Operator era regardless of route: no agent, hosted or open, is guaranteed passage on every site. Operator itself had sites it would not touch, and every alternative inherits some version of the same boundary - why an agent gets blocked is about which parts of that are the browser's fault and which are yours.

Why this keeps happening, briefly

Reading the announcements together, a pattern is visible and worth naming without editorializing: OpenAI has treated the browser agent as a feature in search of its right container - standalone product, ChatGPT mode, standalone browser, then back into ChatGPT and an extension. Coverage of the Atlas shutdown quotes the conclusion that the browser is "a feature, not the destination". For users, the practical lesson is less about OpenAI than about hosted agents generally: a capability you rent can be reorganized out from under you without a deprecation window, which the August 2026 agent-mode removal demonstrated. It is the strongest argument the open-source column of this wiki has, and it was written by events, not by us.

Short answers to the questions that lead here

Is OpenAI Operator still available? No. It shut down 31 August 2025.

Did ChatGPT agent replace it, and is that still there? It did, in July 2025, and no: agent mode was removed in early August 2026. OpenAI's help pages now point to ChatGPT Work.

What happened to ChatGPT Atlas? Shut down 9 August 2026, with agentic browsing folded into the ChatGPT desktop app, the Chrome extension, and Codex. It never left macOS while it lived, per coverage of the shutdown.

Can I still access Operator if I pay for Pro? No tier restores it. The subscription route today is ChatGPT's built-in browsing agent and ChatGPT Work.

Is there an API version? Yes: the computer use tool in the Responses API, now generally available and driven by current models, where you provide the environment it controls.

What is the closest replacement I can run myself? An open-source browser agent with your own model key - see Open-source Operator-style agents.

See also: OpenAI Operator alternatives for the full option landscape, OpenAI Operator vs Claude computer use for the two vendor architectures, and Choosing an AI browser agent for how to pick a replacement that will not need replacing.

Sources

Kept current by the maintainers of AIHawk, an open-source AI web agent. We have an interest in the answer being "no", so every date above traces to OpenAI's own pages or mainstream reporting rather than to us.

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