ChatGPT now lets you hide individual conversations behind a four-digit PIN or your phone’s face or fingerprint unlock. OpenAI started rolling out the feature, called locked chats, on October 20, and TechCrunch reports it is available on every plan, including the free one.
What locked chats actually do
When you lock a conversation, it disappears from your normal chat list, your pinned chats and the search results inside ChatGPT. It moves to a separate “Locked chats” area that only opens with your PIN, or with Face ID or Touch ID on devices that support them.
OpenAI pitches this for everyday situations: handing your phone or laptop to a friend or family member while keeping a personal conversation, or a surprise you are planning, out of sight. Unlike ChatGPT’s Temporary Chats, which are not saved, a locked chat stays around so you can come back to it whenever you like.
If you use ChatGPT’s Memory feature (where it remembers details about you between chats), locked chats get their own separate memory. According to TechCrunch, what you say inside the locked area does not feed into the memory used by your regular chats.
What they don’t do
This is a privacy screen, not a safe. OpenAI is clear about the limits:
- Locking a chat is not end-to-end encryption (the kind of scrambling where only you can read the content). Engadget quotes the company plainly: “What they aren’t is a form of end-to-end encryption.”
- It does not change how long OpenAI keeps the conversation.
- It does not change your “Improve the model for everyone” setting, which controls whether chats can be used to train AI models.
- It does not erase anything ChatGPT already remembered about you before you locked the chat.
Some chats can’t be locked at all. TechCrunch lists temporary, archived and group chats, chats opened from a shared link, chats with scheduled tasks and chats with meeting recordings. Engadget adds that Codex coding conversations are excluded too.
Don’t forget your PIN
The biggest catch is the reset. If you forget your PIN and reset it, ChatGPT permanently deletes every locked chat, plus any files and other content protected by the old PIN. Engadget notes OpenAI’s warning that this “cannot be undone” and that its support team cannot get the content back.
So if a conversation really matters to you, keep a copy somewhere else, or pick a PIN you will remember.
Who gets it
Locked chats are coming to ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu accounts. The one exception TechCrunch mentions is ChatGPT for Healthcare. On iPhone and Android, Engadget says you can still use voice mode inside locked chats.
The rollout is gradual, so it may take a few days to reach your account.
What it means for you
This is a free, useful feature if you share a device or worry about someone glancing at your screen. It costs nothing extra on any plan. When it reaches you, open the three-dot menu on a conversation and choose “Lock chat”, then confirm. Just remember what it is for: keeping nosy people out of a chat on your device. It does not hide anything from OpenAI, and a forgotten PIN means those chats are gone for good.
Sources
- ChatGPT now lets you lock your chats — TechCrunch
- ChatGPT now lets you lock sensitive chats behind a PIN — Engadget