OpenAI confirmed a ChatGPT mobile-app incident on October 15, 2026 that disrupted logins and new signups on both iOS and Android. The company reported that it applied a mitigation and later marked all affected services fully recovered the same day. If you are still seeing an error on October 16, check OpenAI’s live Status page first; the published incident record does not identify a device-side cause.
What happened to ChatGPT’s mobile apps?
OpenAI’s incident report described an issue affecting authentication across ChatGPT’s mobile applications. The first notice referred to problems with logins and signups. A subsequent update broadened the description to “widespread feature degradation,” specifically including login and signup failures in the ChatGPT iOS and Android apps.
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That means the incident was a service-side availability problem confirmed by OpenAI, rather than only a collection of isolated reports from individual phones. The functions named in the report were signing in to an existing account and creating a new account. The report did not say that every ChatGPT feature failed, and it did not publish a root cause, affected-user count, failure percentage or service-level statistic.
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| Time (UTC), October 15, 2026 | OpenAI update | What it meant for users |
|---|---|---|
| 16:29 | Investigation began into login and signup issues across ChatGPT mobile applications. | Users could encounter errors while opening an account or authenticating in the app. |
| 16:35 | OpenAI described widespread feature degradation affecting iOS and Android logins and signups. | The problem was recognized as affecting both major mobile platforms. |
| 17:13 | OpenAI said it had applied a mitigation and was monitoring recovery. | A fix had been deployed, but service restoration was still being observed. |
| 18:56 | OpenAI reported that all impacted services had fully recovered. | The incident was closed according to the company’s status update. |
Is ChatGPT down right now?
The October 15 incident is listed as fully recovered, so it does not by itself show that ChatGPT is down on October 16. Outages can recur, however, and a past recovery does not guarantee that every account or network will work immediately. The authoritative check is OpenAI’s Status page, which provides current operational information and a history of incidents.
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How to check the official status
- Open OpenAI’s Status page in a browser, preferably on the same network where the app is failing.
- Look for an active ChatGPT incident and read the affected-component and platform description.
- Compare the incident’s posted start, mitigation and recovery times with the time your error appeared.
- If no incident is active, continue with account and app checks rather than assuming a broad outage.
The Status page is also useful when the app itself cannot authenticate, because it is separate from the mobile login screen. OpenAI’s help guidance says the page contains current and historic uptime details and is updated to reflect operational systems.
Why can’t I log in on an iPhone or Android phone?
During the confirmed incident, the most likely explanation for a failed mobile login was the service degradation OpenAI was investigating. After recovery, a persistent error may have another cause, such as an expired session, an incorrect password, an unavailable identity provider, or a local network restriction. The incident record does not establish which of those applies to any individual user.
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Checks to make after the Status page
- Close and reopen the ChatGPT app, then retry once the Status page shows recovery.
- Confirm that the phone has a working internet connection by opening another secure website.
- Try the account’s sign-in method again, such as email and password or the same federated sign-in option originally used.
- Install an app update only if one is already offered by the device’s official app store.
- If the app remains blocked while the service is operational, try signing in through ChatGPT’s supported web interface to distinguish an account problem from an app-specific problem.
These checks are general isolation steps, not fixes identified by OpenAI for the October 15 event. The company did not attribute that incident to a damaged phone, storage issue or home-router failure.
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Why won’t ChatGPT let me sign up on Android?
New-account creation was one of the two functions explicitly named in OpenAI’s incident description, and Android was one of the affected platforms. During the incident window, repeatedly submitting the form was unlikely to help because the failure was on the service side. Once the Status page reports normal operation, retry the signup flow and verify that the email address, authentication method and network are correct.
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If signup still fails after recovery, record the exact error text, the time it occurred, the phone platform and app version, and whether the same account works in a browser. Those details help separate a continuing service incident from an account-validation or app issue.
What OpenAI has not disclosed
OpenAI’s public updates for this event contain no root-cause explanation, estimate of affected users, percentage of failed requests or service-level measurement. It is therefore not possible to say whether one country, carrier, app version or account type was hit harder than another. Claims that identify a specific technical cause go beyond the published incident information.
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What to do if the problem returns
- Check the Status page before changing device settings or reinstalling the app.
- Note whether the failure is login, signup or another function; OpenAI may list components separately.
- Save the timestamp and wording of the error, including your time zone.
- Wait for an official mitigation or recovery update before repeating the same action many times.
- If no incident is listed and the problem persists, use OpenAI’s normal support route with the recorded details.
Reinstalling the app, buying networking hardware or running device-cleanup software was not identified as a remedy in the incident report. Those actions can add inconvenience without addressing a server-side authentication failure.
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