Most people use ChatGPT one way. You open it, you ask, you read the answer, you close the tab. The work happens while you are sitting there.
On June 17, 2026, OpenAI made that far easier to find and use. ChatGPT now has a Scheduled Tasks hub. You can tell it to do something on a schedule, and it runs on its own clock. A reminder before a renewal. A Monday-morning summary waiting in your notifications. A quiet watch on a price or a policy that only pings you when something actually changes.
For an owner who wears every hat, that is worth a few minutes to understand. Not because it is flashy. Because it is the first taste of an AI that does a job without you babysitting it.
What actually shipped
This is not brand new. ChatGPT first added a Tasks beta back on January 14, 2025, which let Plus, Pro, and Team users set reminders and recurring requests. Unattended tasks already existed. The June 2026 release made them far easier to find and use.
The June 2026 update is the grown-up version. OpenAI added a dedicated "Scheduled" page in the ChatGPT sidebar, on both web and mobile. Open it and you see every active task, when each one runs next, and buttons to pause, resume, edit, or delete. OpenAI says that with the new system, "all tasks are faster and more reliable" than before.
Three kinds of tasks are supported:
- One-off reminders. A nudge at a set time, like a Thursday-morning ping to send an invoice.
- Recurring jobs. The same work on a repeat, like a short Monday rundown of what is happening in your industry or your town.
- Monitoring tasks. A watch on something that changes. OpenAI describes these as tasks that "check for changes and send a notification only when there is something to report."
That last one is the interesting part for a small business. You are not asking for a daily report you have to read. You are asking to be left alone until there is news.
You can pin a task to an exact time or to a looser window, like morning, afternoon, or evening. Tasks run once per hour at most. So this is steady, scheduled help, not a real-time alarm.
The most often a scheduled task runs. This is steady, scheduled help, not a real-time alarm.
Source: OpenAI, 2026Who can use it, and where
Scheduled Tasks is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. OpenAI's documentation also lists task limits for Go and Edu accounts, though its availability section does not currently include those two plans. Free access has not been announced, so leave that out of your planning for now.
The Scheduled page is available on the ChatGPT website and mobile apps. It is not currently in the ChatGPT desktop app or the separate Codex app. So if you do not see the "Scheduled" page yet, check on your phone or in a browser.
OpenAI has published active-task limits, but its Help Center currently contradicts itself on one plan. It lists Go at 3 tasks, Plus at 5, Business and Edu at 10, and Pro and Enterprise at 15. A separate answer on the same page says Business receives 15. The safest move is to check the limit shown inside your own account.
One housekeeping note if you used the older proactive-updates feature called Pulse. OpenAI is retiring it. Pro users keep access for 14 days after the June 17 announcement. After that, you can replace its basic daily-update function with a scheduled briefing, though it may not look or behave exactly like Pulse.
What it will not do (and why that is the useful part)
A few things are off the table inside scheduled tasks. No voice chats. No uploaded files as part of the task, including files saved inside a ChatGPT project. No GPTs. And monitoring runs on a schedule rather than a live trigger. These are periodic checks, not instant alerts, and OpenAI does not describe scheduled tasks as a webhook or real-time event system.
Read that list again, because it is teaching you something.
The tool is built to run on a schedule, surface results to you, and stop. It caps how often it runs. It limits how many tasks you can stack. It keeps you in the chair where the decisions get made.
That is automation with a railing on it.
For someone who feels behind on AI, that boundary is a gift. You are not handing over your whole inbox. You are handing over one small, repeating job and watching how it goes.
Three tasks to try this week
You do not need a strategy deck for this. Pick one.
- The renewal reminder. A one-off task that pings you three days before a contract, domain, license, or insurance policy renews. The kind of thing that costs real money when it slips.
- The Monday rundown. A recurring task that gives you a short summary of your industry or your town every Monday morning, so you walk into the week already read in.
- The quiet watch. A monitoring task on something you care about, as long as ChatGPT can reliably reach the information. A public pricing page. A grant announcement. A policy update in your field. It stays silent until there is a change worth your attention.
Start with one. Run it for a week. Notice whether the output is something you would have done yourself, and whether it saved you the trip.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
One detail gets lost in most of the coverage. The win is that you defined a job and set it to run on its own.
That is a small version of the real skill. At LaunchReady we map AI ability across The 7 Levels of AI Proficiency, and the climb is less about typing clever prompts and more about designing the recurring work you want handled, then deciding what the AI is allowed to do on its own. A scheduled reminder is the training-wheels edition of that. You are designing a tiny workflow and setting a clear boundary: run on this clock, tell me what you find, wait for my call on what happens next.
Get comfortable there, and the next questions arrive on their own. Which jobs in my week repeat? Which ones could run without me? Where do I still need to be the one who decides? Those are the questions that turn a person who feels behind into a person who is building.
Your next step
Open ChatGPT on your phone or in a browser and look for the "Scheduled" page in the sidebar. Set one task. The renewal reminder is the easiest place to start, and it is the one most likely to save you actual money before the month is out.
Then pay attention to how it feels to have something handled while you were doing other work. That feeling is the on-ramp. The rest of the climb is just deciding which job to hand over next.
Sources
- Scheduled tasks in ChatGPT (OpenAI Help Center)
- ChatGPT Business release notes (OpenAI Help Center)
- ChatGPT now has a hub for scheduled tasks (Engadget)
- OpenAI launches scheduled tasks in ChatGPT: details here (9to5Mac)
- OpenAI expands ChatGPT scheduled tasks with new hub (IT Brief)
- ChatGPT now lets you schedule reminders and recurring tasks (TechCrunch)
Related reading: Level 5: The Captain (Design Thinker).
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a new feature or a renamed old one?
Both, in a sense. ChatGPT had a Tasks beta since January 2025. The June 17, 2026 update adds the dedicated Scheduled hub, the sidebar page, and the monitoring task type, and OpenAI says the system is faster and more reliable than before.
How often can a task run?
Once per hour at most. You can also set a task to a broad window like morning or evening instead of an exact time.
Do I need a paid plan?
Yes. It is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise accounts. OpenAI has not announced access for the free tier.
Can it watch a web page and tell me only when it changes?
That is what monitoring tasks are for. They check on a schedule and notify you only when there is something to report. They are periodic checks, not instant live alerts, and they work best on information ChatGPT can reliably reach.
What can it not do?
Inside scheduled tasks there are no voice chats, no uploaded files as part of the task (including files saved in a project), and no GPTs. Monitoring is scheduled rather than event-driven, and OpenAI does not describe it as a webhook or real-time system.
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