ChatGPT now offers its users the ability to lock their chats. OpenAI on Tuesday announced a chat-locking feature for ChatGPT users who want to keep sensitive conversations private. Locked chats can be protected with a four-digit PIN or, on supported devices, with Face ID or Touch ID. Unlike Temporary Chats, which do not appear in the chat history, users can return to Locked Chats at any time.
The company says the feature is designed for people who want to keep personal conversations or surprise plans private when handing their device to friends or family to show them something. This is a new layer for ChatGPT. Locked chats add a new privacy layer to ChatGPT as the app is increasingly used for more personal conversations. OpenAI notes that locking does not create end-to-end encryption or a separate encrypted vault, and does not change the retention period. The company also notes that information remembered before locking is not deleted and that the “Improve the model for everyone” setting is not affected.
A locked chat is kept separate from the normal history. This content, which is also removed from pinned conversations and search results, is moved to a dedicated “Locked Chats” section. When memory is turned on, this section has its own separate memory. Messages sent after locking only update this memory, so information does not leak into normal chats. Resetting the PIN has serious consequences. OpenAI emphasizes that resetting the PIN permanently deletes all locked chats protected by the previous PIN. Files and content are also permanently deleted.
The feature cannot be used in the following chats:
- temporary chats
- archived chats
- group chats
- chats created from a shared link
- chats with scheduled tasks
- chats with meeting recordings
Locked Chats is available on the following plans: – Free – Go – Plus – Pro – Business – Enterprise – Edu Locked Chats is offered as a feature to ChatGPT users on all of the plans listed below.
The company also notes that the feature is not available in ChatGPT for Healthcare and states that the rollout began on Tuesday for all users. The rollout is still under way. Since the rollout began on Tuesday, the feature may not yet have been enabled for all users.
Why it matters
As ChatGPT is increasingly used for more personal matters in daily life, privacy becomes a practical issue for users who share the same device. Although the new feature addresses this need, the scope of protection is limited: because locking does not provide end-to-end encryption, conversations are not kept in a separate encrypted vault, and the setting on the use of data in model training does not change. As a result, while the feature offers protection against people in one’s close circle who pick up the device, it does not amount to a solution for those with expectations regarding the company’s data processing practices. The fact that resetting the PIN permanently deletes all locked content is an irreversible risk that users need to know about in advance. The absence of the feature in ChatGPT for Healthcare, meanwhile, shows that different rules apply in versions that hold sensitive data.
Background
ChatGPT is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 41 stories mentioning this name in the last 90 days; the most recent is dated October 17, 2026.