OpenAI has begun rolling out Locked Chats in ChatGPT, a feature that hides select conversations behind a 4-digit account PIN and keeps them out of your regular chat history, saved chats, and conversation searches. The company’s help page for locked chats lists it for every plan from Free and Go up to Enterprise and Edu, but the rollout is gradual, so the option may not appear in your account yet.
OpenAI pitches it as a way to keep sensitive conversations out of sight when sharing your screen or handing a device to someone else.
Locking a chat takes a few taps
Open the more options menu (•••) on an eligible conversation, select Lock chatand confirm. The first time you do this, ChatGPT will ask you to create a PIN. The conversation then ends Projects > Block chatsand its title drops out of the sidebar in regular search.
To get back in, open locked chats and enter the PIN. iPhone users can turn on Face ID or Touch ID, and on Android the phone’s unlock method works instead. Those PIN is tied to your OpenAI account, so that the same one works across devices, while biometric locking must be set up separately on each phone.
Access will not remain open for long. Op iOS in the Androidlocked chats close again after a minute away from them or a minute with the app in the background. On the web, refreshing the page or closing the tab ends access, and the desktop app locks again when you’ve left the window. A Unlock now Button closes everything immediately.
There is a practical gotcha. If ChatGPT is already open on another device, that device may continue to display the title of the locked chat until its conversation list refreshes, and on iOS, content already loaded may also remain on the screen. So if you’re about to present a second laptop, give the app a refresh first.
Plans, apps and chats you can’t block
Lock chats work on Chas GPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu. ChatGPT for Healthcare is omitted. On desktop, you need OpenAI’s new ChatGPT app for macOS or Windows, where you can block eligible cloud conversations in chat or work mode.
Codex conversations cannot be locked, including Cloud Codex, and neither can local Work conversations. The option is also missing for temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, chats with scheduled tasks or meeting recordings, and any chat created by a shared link. Voice still works in locked chats on the web and in the iOS and Android apps, but not in the desktop app.
What lock does not do?
OpenAI’s documentation is clear that the lock changes where a chat appears and how you open it, and not much else. You don’t get end-to-end encryption or a separate encrypted vault, and OpenAI keeps the conversation going for exactly as long as it would have anyway. Your “Improve the model for everyone” setting is also untouched. Everything that ChatGPT already saved in memory before you locked the chat will remain in memory.
Locked chats can still draw on your normal memory, and what ChatGPT records in a locked chat can be used in your other locked chats, but it does not carry back to regular conversations.
On work accounts, blocking does not override workplace policies or legal and compliance obligations. Locked chats in Enterprise and Edu workspaces still show up in the conversation logs available through the OpenAI Compliance Platform. However, administrators cannot turn off the feature, and they cannot open your chats or reset your PIN for you.
You cannot pin, archive, move or share a locked chat without opening it first. On Android, screenshots of locked chats may come out blank.
Forget the PIN and your locked chats are gone
Change your PIN is easy as long as you know the current one, and your locked chats remain. Resetting a forgotten PIN is another story. It’s permanent last all locked chatanyone Memories only stored inside them, and Files protected only of the old PIN. OpenAI says the deletion cannot be undone, and his support team may not have lost anything this way.
Forgetting the PIN alone does not delete anythingso there’s no need to rush a reset if it slips up on you. Enter it wrong too many times, though, and ChatGPT will lock you out for a while before you can try again.
If you’d rather have a conversation never stay at all, Temporary chat is still the better tool. These chats remain out of your history and are not used to improve OpenAI’s models while they remain temporary. Block chats, on the other hand, are saved like any other conversation and follow any model improvement settings your account already uses.