OpenAI began rolling out Locked Chats on Oct. 20, giving ChatGPT users a way to shield saved conversations from casual viewing while leaving data retention and model-improvement settings intact.
The feature is arriving gradually across Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans. It is available on the web, iOS, Android and OpenAI’s desktop app for macOS and Windows, though eligible users may not see it immediately. ChatGPT for Healthcare does not support Locked Chats.
Users can find protected conversations under Projects > Locked chats and open them with a four-digit account PIN. Supported iOS devices also offer Face ID or Touch ID, while supported Android devices can use device unlock. The feature is designed for situations in which another person might see a user’s screen or device.
The protection may take time to appear across an account. Search can briefly show a newly locked conversation, and a ChatGPT session already open on another device may display its title until the chat list updates. On iOS, content loaded before the lock was applied may remain on screen until the app refreshes. An existing shared link also stays active for material shared before the conversation was locked.
Locked Chats does not encrypt conversations end to end. It leaves the account’s existing retention and model-improvement choices in force. In Enterprise and Edu workspaces, the conversations remain in logs available through the OpenAI Compliance Platform.
If Memory is enabled, information saved from regular chats can inform a locked conversation. Memories created from messages sent after locking can inform other locked chats, but they do not carry into regular chats.
Not every conversation is eligible: temporary, archived and group chats cannot be locked, nor can chats containing scheduled tasks or meeting recordings. Users who know their current PIN can change it without losing their locked chats. Resetting a forgotten PIN permanently deletes those chats, memories stored only within them and content protected only by the old PIN.
