Temporary Chat is ChatGPT's incognito mode. The conversation does not appear in your history, is not added to memory, and is not used for training. OpenAI still keeps a copy for up to 30 days for safety review, and the chat is gone from your side as soon as you close it.
Short answer
Temporary Chat is ChatGPT's incognito mode. The conversation does not appear in your history, is not added to memory, and is not used for training. OpenAI still keeps a copy for up to 30 days for safety review, and the chat is gone from your side as soon as you close it.
Step by step
Start a temporary chat: Click the model name at the top of a new chat and toggle Temporary Chat, or use the dedicated icon in the top right depending on your client version.
Confirm the banner: A notice appears saying the chat will not appear in history. If that banner is missing, you are in a normal conversation.
Save anything you need before closing: There is no recovery. Copy the text out, or export the page, before you navigate away or refresh.
Close the chat to end it: Starting a new conversation or leaving the page ends the session. Reopening Temporary Chat gives you a blank slate with no recollection of the previous one.
Temporary Chat is the closest thing ChatGPT has to a private browsing window. It is genuinely useful, and it is also routinely misunderstood in both directions: people trust it with things it does not protect, and people avoid it for tasks where it would be ideal.
What it actually changes
| Behaviour | Normal chat | Temporary chat |
|---|---|---|
| Appears in sidebar history | Yes | No |
| Contributes to memory | Yes | No |
| Reads existing memories | Yes | No |
| Used for model training | Depends on plan | No |
| Retained by OpenAI | Until you delete it | Up to 30 days for safety review |
The memory line cuts both ways. A temporary chat cannot see what ChatGPT knows about you, which is exactly why answers can feel more generic. If you rely on memory for context about your projects, temporary mode will feel like talking to a stranger.
What it does not do
It does not hide the conversation from OpenAI. A copy exists for a limited period so abuse can be investigated. It does not anonymise you, because the request still comes from your authenticated account and your IP address. It does not make sensitive input safe. Pasting client data into a temporary chat is still pasting client data into a third party service.
Think of it as "not persisted in my account" rather than "not seen by anyone."
Good uses for it
Asking a question you would rather not have shaping your memory profile.
One off research that would clutter a carefully organised sidebar.
Testing prompts where you do not want earlier attempts influencing later output.
Letting someone else use your machine without contaminating your history.
Anything where a fresh context window genuinely produces a better answer.
The obvious downside
You lose the transcript. Every week people produce something excellent in a temporary chat and then close the tab. There is no history entry, no archive, no export, no recovery.
If the output has any value, get it out before you leave: copy the response, or select the whole conversation and print to PDF from the browser. For everything in your normal history, the proper route is Settings, Data Controls, Export Data, then convert the resulting conversations.json into readable files. Temporary chats are absent from that export by definition, which is the entire point and also the trap.
Temporary chat versus deleting afterwards
Deleting a normal chat after the fact removes it from your sidebar and starts the 30 day purge, but it has already been written to memory and, on consumer plans with training enabled, already collected. Temporary Chat prevents all of that up front. If you know in advance that a conversation should leave no trace, start it temporary rather than cleaning up later.
Frequently asked questions
Can I recover a temporary chat after closing it?
No. It is not stored in your account in any form, so there is nothing to restore.
Do temporary chats count against my usage limits?
Yes. Message and model caps apply exactly as they do in normal conversations.
Does Temporary Chat hide my activity from my employer?
Not on a Team or Enterprise workspace. Administrative visibility and compliance retention are set at the workspace level.
Are temporary chats included in my data export?
No. Exports contain conversations stored in your history, and temporary chats are never written there.