ChatGPT temporary chat: what it does and doesn’t do
Temporary chat is one of the most useful privacy settings in ChatGPT, and one of the most misunderstood. Here’s what it really does.
Short answer
A temporary chat stays out of your ChatGPT history and memory, and isn’t used for training. It isn’t anonymous: it sits under your account, everything you type is still sent to OpenAI, and OpenAI keeps it for up to 30 days for safety checks.
You’re about to ask something you don’t want in your history. You click the temporary chat button at the top of ChatGPT, and the screen turns dark. What changed?
What it does
- Not in your history. The chat isn’t saved in your sidebar. Close it and it’s gone from your view.
- No memory. ChatGPT doesn’t use what it remembers about you, and doesn’t add anything from this chat to its memory.
- Not used for training. Temporary chats aren’t used to train future models, even if training is on in your settings.
Claude has the same idea, called an incognito chat. Gemini has a temporary chat too.
What it doesn’t do
- It isn’t anonymous. You’re still logged in. The chat sits under your account, with your email and your payment details.
- It isn’t deleted right away. OpenAI keeps temporary chats for up to 30 days, for safety checks.
- It doesn’t hide what you type. Everything you write is sent to OpenAI and read by the model, just like a normal chat.
- It doesn’t beat a court order. In 2025, a court made OpenAI keep temporary chats too, for months. Here’s what happened.
Asking something personal? Melo, Kamelo’s free private chat, answers on your own computer, so your question isn’t sent anywhere. How it works
When it’s enough
Temporary chat is good for keeping something out of your own history, out of memory and out of training. It’s a good habit for anything personal. It’s not enough if the problem is what’s in the message: your name, someone else’s name, an address, an ID number. Those are still sent, and still stored for up to 30 days.
Where Kamelo helps
Kamelo is free privacy software for your browser, and it works together with temporary chat. When you write about something personal on ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, a calm notice suggests a better place: one click opens a temporary chat with your message already in it. For questions that shouldn’t leave your computer at all, Melo, Kamelo’s private chat, answers on your own computer in Chrome. Kamelo doesn’t change what you send, so leave out details you don’t need.