OpenAI started rolling out Locked Chats in ChatGPT on 20 October, for every plan from Free to Enterprise. A locked conversation moves to a separate section that opens only with a four-digit PIN, or with Face ID, Touch ID or your phone’s unlock on supported devices. The lock hides chats from view without encrypting them, and resetting a forgotten PIN permanently deletes every locked chat.
Locked chats leave your history and open with a PIN or Face ID
Once the Lock chat option reaches your account, locking a conversation removes it from your regular history, your pinned chats and search. You find it again under Projects, in a section called Locked chats. ChatGPT asks you to create a four-digit PIN the first time you lock a chat or open that section. On an iPhone you can add Face ID or Touch ID, and on Android your device unlock, but only on that device and never instead of the PIN.
Access closes quickly. The section locks again when you leave the browser tab, or after one minute away on a phone. Too many wrong PINs block access for a while.
Unlike Temporary Chat, which never appears in your history, a locked chat stays in your account until you delete it. Availability depends on your plan and device:
- Plans: Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu. ChatGPT for Healthcare is not included.
- Devices: the web, iOS, Android and the new ChatGPT desktop app for macOS and Windows. Voice works in locked chats on the web and on phones, but not in the desktop app.
- Rollout: gradual from 20 October. OpenAI names no countries or regions, so check your own account over the coming days.
- Not lockable, among others: temporary, archived and group chats, chats opened from a shared link, chats with scheduled tasks or meeting recordings, Codex conversations and local Work conversations.
Locked Chats hides conversations from view without encrypting them
OpenAI is clear about the limits. Locking adds no end-to-end encryption and no separate encrypted vault. It does not change how long OpenAI keeps the chat or your “Improve the model for everyone” setting. It also does not erase what ChatGPT remembered before you locked the chat. Anyone who can open a locked chat can still copy its contents.
Memory works differently inside the locked section. Memories formed in locked chats stay there and do not flow back into your regular chats. Locking a chat that sits in a project takes it out of that project, so it loses the project’s instructions, files and memory.
In short, the feature protects you from the person next to you: a colleague glancing at your screen, a relative borrowing your phone, a projector in a meeting. It does not change what OpenAI stores or the legal obligations OpenAI has to meet.
A PIN reset deletes every locked chat, and OpenAI cannot restore them
The PIN belongs to your OpenAI account, not to a workspace. Forgetting it deletes nothing. Resetting it removes all locked chats for good, together with memories and files that only the old PIN protected. OpenAI’s help article says this cannot be undone and that OpenAI Support cannot recover the content. Changing the PIN while you still know the current one keeps your chats. If you lock anything you will need later, keep the PIN in your password manager.
Admins cannot switch Locked Chats off or open locked chats
Business, Enterprise and Edu admins get no control over the feature. They cannot disable Locked Chats through a workspace setting or role permission, cannot unlock a chat and cannot reset an employee’s PIN. Locked chats in Enterprise and Edu workspaces still appear in the Compliance Platform message logs, so the compliance export keeps seeing them.
For the organisations DataNorth works with, this calls for a short addition to the AI usage guidelines rather than a new policy. Explain that a locked chat is hidden from people nearby, not from OpenAI or from your own compliance tools. Make clear that the rules on what may go into ChatGPT stay exactly the same. And ask staff not to keep work they need only in a locked chat, because a PIN reset deletes it and neither IT nor OpenAI can bring it back. Used that way, Locked Chats is a sensible extra for shared laptops and screen sharing.
For personal accounts the advice is simpler: lock what you would not want someone to read over your shoulder, and do not share more with ChatGPT because of the lock.
For more information, visit the official help article on Locked Chats in the OpenAI Help Center.
