Sharing your screen or a laptop? ChatGPT Locked Chats hides chats behind a PIN, but resetting a forgotten PIN deletes them

#What changed

On Oct 20, 2026, ChatGPT announced Locked Chats. Open a chat's ••• menu and pick Lock chat; it moves to Projects > Locked chats and drops out of regular history, pinned chats, and conversation search. Opening that area takes your 4-digit account PIN on web and desktop, or Face ID, Touch ID, or device unlock on supported phones. Access ends on its own: on mobile after 1 minute away or in the background, on web when you refresh or close the tab, and anywhere when you tap Lock now. New messages in a locked chat don't feed the memory used in your regular chats.

#Who is affected

It is rolling out gradually to Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Edu on web, iOS, Android, and the new ChatGPT desktop app for macOS and Windows. It isn't available on ChatGPT for Healthcare. Codex conversations (including cloud Codex) and local Work conversations can't be locked, and neither can temporary, archived, group, shared-link, scheduled-task, or meeting-recording chats.

#What to do now

• Pick a PIN you won't forget. Changing it with your current PIN keeps your chats, but resetting a forgotten PIN permanently deletes all locked chats and the files protected only by them. OpenAI Support and workspace admins can't recover or reset it.
• Delete any scheduled tasks on a chat before you lock it, since chats with scheduled tasks can't be locked.
• Before you share your screen, check your other open devices. They can keep showing a locked chat's title until their chat list refreshes.
• If you want a conversation kept out of history and model training, use Temporary Chat instead. Locked chats keep your existing retention and model-improvement settings.
• Locking a project chat pulls it out of the project, along with that project's instructions, files, and memory.

#What is not confirmed

• Locking is not end-to-end encryption, and in Enterprise and Edu workspaces locked chats still appear in Compliance Platform logs.
• The Oct 20 release note lists only Free, Go, Plus, and Pro, while the help article and ChatGPT's post also list Business, Enterprise, and Edu. Rollout is gradual, so Lock chat may not show up for you yet.