Tell HN: Perplexity Has Unspecified Character Limits for Session Export
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It should also be noted that no simple option exists within the Perplexity UI to export an entire session. Select-All/Copy/Paste captures only single or small groups. To test this: generate a session with a dozen or so pages (or open an extant session) and try to copy the content and paste to txt file. You'll see it doesn't work.
This does not apply to Claude, Gemini, Grok or GPT, all of which presently permit Select All
Edit: I also think it's worth discussing the actual advantages of using Perplexity over a dedicated model, eg Claude (my personal choice). Obviously, to offer so many models as Perplexity does, and for the same dollar amount, quality must be pruned somewhere. I have yet to purchase a subscription for a single model provider, but I am going to confidently guess that the session degradation, context preservation, memory and general coherence would be superior in a dedicated model. I'm not terribly informed on LLM details, but surmise some token austerity is involved in Perplexity's perplexing generosity. But I think it's safe enough to say, they must cut costs where they can, and the session export bug may rather be a feature of austerity, which I'm pretty sure is among more than a few more features disguised as bugs.
And yes, I'm mildly bitter. I've lost many hours of work due to being foolish enough to believe Export as PDF means export as pdf. A smart person doesn't believe what they read
This does not apply to Claude, Gemini, Grok or GPT, all of which presently permit Select All
Edit: I also think it's worth discussing the actual advantages of using Perplexity over a dedicated model, eg Claude (my personal choice). Obviously, to offer so many models as Perplexity does, and for the same dollar amount, quality must be pruned somewhere. I have yet to purchase a subscription for a single model provider, but I am going to confidently guess that the session degradation, context preservation, memory and general coherence would be superior in a dedicated model. I'm not terribly informed on LLM details, but surmise some token austerity is involved in Perplexity's perplexing generosity. But I think it's safe enough to say, they must cut costs where they can, and the session export bug may rather be a feature of austerity, which I'm pretty sure is among more than a few more features disguised as bugs.
And yes, I'm mildly bitter. I've lost many hours of work due to being foolish enough to believe Export as PDF means export as pdf. A smart person doesn't believe what they read
I discovered, the hard way, that exporting Perplexity sessions to PDF results in substantial content loss when the page is ~90 pages.
After opening a ticket on the matter, a brief dialogue with a rep proved unhelpful and confusing. It was stated that the Export as PDF feature only exports individual "threads", and that to export an entire session, each so-called thread must be individually selected and exported. This is simply wrong.
In practice, there is no method to select threads through the Top-Right/ 3-dot menu/Export as PDF option. Testing this with various sessions from 1 to 170 page exports showed no indication that threads were relevant.
Exports under 90 pages tend* to retain all content, while a 93-page didn't, but a 95 and 170 page export did. This indicates that the character limit (if that's the cause) is variable, as 170 pages is almost guaranteed to contain more characters than 90.
The fundamental point here, whatever the cause, is that data loss is inevitable under the present UI with its absence of documentation, notices etc.
*I observed changes after submitting the ticket and modifications have already been made. The situation was worse before, and now less worse, but still applies.