ChatGPT now lets you lock private chats with a PIN—but forgetting it could erase them for good

OpenAI has started rolling out a way for ChatGPT users to hide sensitive conversations behind a four-digit PIN. Locked chats stay in the account, but they disappear from the usual chat list, pinned chats, and search, and live in a separate spot under Projects > Locked chats.

The catch is brutal. If someone forgets the PIN and resets it, OpenAI says every locked chat gets deleted permanently, along with memories stored only there and any files or other content protected only by that PIN. The company says support can’t bring anything back, and workspace admins can’t reset it for users either. If the PIN is still remembered, changing it does not wipe anything.

This is less of a privacy vault than a visibility switch. OpenAI says locked chats do not add end-to-end encryption, do not create a separate encrypted store, and do not change how long the company retains the data. They also do not alter a user’s model-improvement setting, override workplace rules, or remove anything ChatGPT already remembered before the chat was locked. In Enterprise and Edu workspaces, the chats still show up in compliance logs.

The feature is rolling out across Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu plans. It works on the new macOS and Windows desktop app, and on mobile devices users can unlock with Face ID, Touch ID, or the phone’s own unlock method where supported. Voice works in locked chats on the web and in iOS and Android apps where available, but not on desktop.

Not everything can be locked. Temporary chats, archived chats, group chats, chats from shared links, scheduled-task chats, meeting recordings, Codex conversations, and local Work conversations are excluded, and the feature is not available on ChatGPT for Healthcare. Shared links are another weak point: locking a chat does not kill an existing link, so anyone who already has it can still view the old content. To revoke that access, users have to delete the link separately.

OpenAI is trying to make chats feel safer without actually changing the company’s underlying access to them, and that’s the real story here. It is privacy theater with a PIN, which is better than nothing and still miles short of what people usually imagine when they hear “locked.”