OpenAI reportedly developing PIN and fingerprint protection for individual ChatGPT conversations

OpenAI appears to be working on a new privacy feature that could allow users to lock individual ChatGPT conversations behind an additional

OpenAI appears to be working on a new privacy feature that could allow users to lock individual ChatGPT conversations behind an additional layer of security, potentially using a PIN, fingerprint or another form of device authentication.

The feature has not yet been officially activated or announced, but hidden references discovered in the latest Android version of ChatGPT suggest that development may already be underway. Android Authority reportedly identified references to “locked chats” and an option to “protect chats” while examining version 1.2026.230 of the ChatGPT Android application.

One of the most revealing pieces of code reportedly describes the purpose of the feature as allowing users to lock a conversation so that its title and contents remain hidden from the normal sidebar, chat history and search results.

If implemented as described, the feature would function primarily as a privacy tool rather than introducing an entirely new type of conversation. Instead of deleting a chat or moving it to a separate account, users could potentially hide an existing conversation from ordinary views and require authentication before accessing it.

Such a feature could be particularly useful for people who regularly use ChatGPT on devices that may be accessed by family members, colleagues, friends or other individuals. A conversation could contain personal information, work-related material, private notes or sensitive questions that a user would prefer not to have displayed openly in their chat list.

ChatGPT already provides Temporary Chats, which are designed for conversations that users do not want to retain in their regular chat history. However, the major drawback is that temporary conversations are not intended to remain available in the same way as ordinary chats. Once the conversation is closed and the retention period ends, users cannot treat it as a normal saved conversation for future reference.

A locked-chat system could offer a middle ground between privacy and accessibility. Rather than removing a sensitive conversation entirely, users could potentially keep it stored in their account while preventing it from appearing openly in their regular chat history. The conversation would remain available when needed, but additional authentication would be required to access it.

This could make the feature especially attractive to users who want to preserve private conversations for future use without allowing those chats to be immediately visible to anyone looking at their device.

However, several important details about the proposed system remain unknown. One of the biggest questions concerns how locked conversations would interact with ChatGPT’s memory and personalization features.

It is currently unclear whether information from a locked conversation could influence responses in ordinary chats when memory is enabled. One possible approach would be to create a privacy boundary, meaning information contained within locked conversations might remain restricted to other protected conversations rather than becoming part of the context used in a user’s regular chats.

Such a system could provide an additional layer of separation between sensitive and everyday conversations.

For now, the feature remains unconfirmed and hidden within the Android application code. OpenAI could change, delay or even abandon the functionality before making it publicly available. Nevertheless, the discovery suggests that stronger conversation-level privacy controls could eventually become part of ChatGPT, giving users more control over which conversations remain visible and which are protected behind device authentication.