ChatGPT locked chats: what they hide and what they don't

Treat ChatGPT's locked chats as a privacy screen. It hides the chats you pick behind a 4-digit PIN and leaves your Memory and data settings as they were. Before you rely on it, decide which sensitive chats to lock, delete or move out of ChatGPT, check Memory, store the PIN safely and turn on multi-factor sign-in (2FA) for the account.

Steps follow OpenAI's locked chats help page and the ChatGPT release notes, checked 21 October 2026. The Nadia example is made up.

What does a locked chat hide, and what doesn't it?

OpenAI's help page says locking hides a chat from your regular chat history, pinned chats and regular conversation search. You reach locked chats through Projects > Locked chats, and open them with your account PIN or, on supported phones, Face ID, Touch ID or your device unlock method. On Android, OpenAI says screenshots of locked chats may come out blank.

The same page is plain about what locking leaves alone. There's no end-to-end encryption or separate encrypted vault, and OpenAI keeps the chat for as long as it would have anyway. Your Improve the model for everyone setting and anything ChatGPT remembered before you locked the chat stay as they were. In ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu workspaces, OpenAI says locked chats are still included in the message logs available through the OpenAI Compliance Platform.

Anyone who can open a locked chat can still copy what's in it. OpenAI also warns that other devices with ChatGPT open may keep showing a locked chat's title until their chat list refreshes, so check those before you share your screen.

So locking keeps chosen chats away from someone looking at your screen. For a shared device, or an account someone else may have got into, what matters is 2FA and a separate login for each person.

Locked chats are rolling out gradually and depend on your plan. The 20 October 2026 release note names Free, Go, Plus and Pro, on the web, the iOS and Android apps and the new ChatGPT desktop app for macOS and Windows. OpenAI's help page and TechCrunch's report also list Business, Enterprise and Edu. The help page says locked chats aren't available on ChatGPT for Healthcare, and that if Lock chat isn't in an eligible chat's more options menu (•••), the feature may not have reached your account yet.

Which chats to lock, delete or move out of ChatGPT

Start with the chats you'd least like someone else to read: money, health, job hunting, client or work material on a personal account, and anything where you pasted a password by mistake. Give each one a single decision.

Lock a chat you still need and only want out of sight, such as a job-hunting thread you'll come back to. Delete a chat you don't need, because a locked chat is still stored in your account. OpenAI says deleted chats can't be recovered and then follow its standard retention policy. For a pasted password, I'd delete the chat and change the password.

Move client or work material out of a personal ChatGPT account and into the tool your employer or client has approved. For the same problem in Copilot, see Keep work out of your personal Copilot account.

Some chats can't be locked. OpenAI's list includes temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, chats created from a shared link, chats with scheduled tasks and chats with meeting recordings, along with chats linked to background tasks, chats in the earlier Health experience and chats with responses saved as project sources. Delete any scheduled tasks on a chat, including paused ones, before you lock it.

A chat that already has a shared link can be locked, and the link keeps working. OpenAI says the content you shared earlier stays available, though new messages aren't added, so delete the link separately if you want to stop access. Locking a chat that sits in a project takes it out of the project, and it stops using that project's instructions, files and memory.

Check Memory, model training and retention

OpenAI says locking doesn't remove anything ChatGPT remembered before you locked the chat. If a salary figure or a health detail is already in regular Memory, it stays there for your regular chats. Open your memory summary and remove what you don't want kept. OpenAI notes that memory summaries and Sources may not show every factor that shaped a response.

Locked chats also keep a memory of their own. When Memory is on, OpenAI says details from messages you send after locking can be remembered for other locked chats and don't carry into regular chats, while locked chats can still use your regular Memory. If you permanently unlock a chat later, the whole conversation may be used for regular Memory, depending on your settings and workspace policies. If you use Claude as well, Review and correct what Claude remembers about your work covers the same check there.

Locked chats follow your existing Improve the model for everyone setting, so check that setting on its own terms. For a conversation you don't need to keep, OpenAI points to temporary chat instead: it stays out of history and isn't used to improve OpenAI's models while it remains temporary. Temporary chats can't be locked, and saving one turns it into a regular chat.

Store the PIN, then protect the account

Resetting a forgotten account PIN permanently deletes every locked chat, any memory stored only in locked chats and any files protected only by the old PIN. OpenAI Support can't recover them, and a workspace administrator can't reset the PIN or unlock your chats. I'd store the PIN in a password manager before locking anything you'd hate to lose.

Changing the PIN keeps your locked chats, but you need the current PIN to do it, even if you normally open them with Face ID or Touch ID. The help page puts Change PIN and Reset PIN under Settings > Security and login > Account PIN. On iOS, turn on Use Face ID or Use Touch ID in Account PIN settings when available. On Android, select Use device unlock when prompted. Device unlock applies only to the device where you set it up, so repeat it on each phone.

Access to locked chats ends after 1 minute away or in the background on iOS and Android, and when you refresh or close the tab on the web. Select Lock now when you've finished.

The PIN only covers the chats you lock. Your other chats and regular Memory stay open to anyone signed in as you, so turn on 2FA for your OpenAI account. The 25 September 2026 release note says Security history, at Settings > Security and login > Security history on the web, shows sign-ins and changes to 2FA and passkeys. On a shared laptop or tablet, give each person their own device login and their own ChatGPT account.

Example: sorting one consultant's sensitive chats

Nadia Brooks is a freelance project consultant on a personal ChatGPT Plus account. Four chats worry her. One compares two job offers, and she sent a shared link from it to a former manager for advice. Another asks what a blood test result means. A third holds a client's draft contract, pasted in for a summary, and the last has her home Wi-Fi password in it from a router fix.

She locks the job-offer chat and the blood test chat, and deletes the shared link first, because locking would leave it working. Her memory summary still mentions the job hunt, so she removes that entry. She deletes the contract chat and does that work in the tools her client's agreement allows. The Wi-Fi chat goes too, and she changes the router password.

She saves the PIN in her password manager and turns on Face ID on her iPhone.

Sources

• Using locked chats in ChatGPT, OpenAI Help Center, checked 21 October 2026.
• ChatGPT release notes, OpenAI Help Center, entries for 20 October and 25 September 2026, checked 21 October 2026.
• ChatGPT now lets you lock your chats, Aisha Malik, TechCrunch, 20 October 2026, checked 21 October 2026.