This new ChatGPT trick lets you download your Canvas work as a PDF in seconds – here's how

OpenAI has updated Canvas, a writing and coding assistant integrated into ChatGPT, allowing users to download and export files directly.

In an X post on Thursday, the company announced that Canvas users can now download text files as PDF, DOCX, or Markdown, while code can be exported to the appropriate file extension (.py for Python, .js for JavaScript, .sql for Structured Query Language, and so on).

Also: Is ChatGPT Plus really worth $20 when the free version offers so many premium features?

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

What is Canvas for ChatGPT?

Canvas is a feature built into ChatGPT and designed to assist writers and coders with fine-grained edits. Certain prompts — such as “Can you help me write and revise an essay on the Roman Republic?” — will automatically open Canvas, which appears as a separate window. ChatGPT can also be directly prompted to open Canvas.

OpenAI introduced Canvas in beta in October, followed by a public release in December.

Also: Why Canvas is ChatGPT’s best productivity feature for power users

The feature was positioned as an editorial assistant that can help speed up some of the more mundane and time-consuming aspects of the writing and coding process. It can suggest inline edits on a written draft, for example, or detect and fix bugs in code.

Canvas can be a huge productivity booster for writers and coders; ZDNET’s senior AI editor has described it as the best ChatGPT-integrated feature since the chatbot was first released in late 2022.

You can now download or export a file in Canvas by selecting the download icon (an arrow pointing down into a square) at the top-right corner of the window.

The bigger picture

The debut of generative AI tools like ChatGPT has caused tremors of anxiety across many creative industries as employers rush to embrace the technology and working professionals look toward a future in which some aspects of their job descriptions could soon be automated.

Also: 6 new ways ChatGPT Projects supercharges your AI chats – how to try it

Many of these tools also excel at coding, causing many working software engineers to wonder about their future job security. Students, meanwhile, have begun to wonder about the practicality of pursuing a degree in computer science.

Thus far, the worst fears of AI-fueled job displacement haven’t materialized, though there are some early indications that tech companies are hiring fewer recent college graduates, a trend that could be fueled in part by the wide-scale embrace of AI.

Also: How to use ChatGPT to write code – and my top trick for debugging what it generates

Leaders at OpenAI, Google, and other leading tech developers have publicly stated their belief that the AI tools they’re building will cause some significant disruptions to the job market. But they also — much more emphatically — say that the technology will ultimately be a boon to human creativity.

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