Data Retention

LibreChat can put an expiry date on conversation data and delete it automatically. The same mechanism handles temporary chats that users start themselves and deployment-wide policies such as "delete every chat after 90 days". All of it is configured under interface in librechat.yaml; each key is also listed in the interface reference.

Options

interface:
  # Seeds the TEMPORARY_CHAT permission for the USER role (manage per role in the Admin Panel)
  temporaryChat: true

  # Which chats expire: "temporary" (default), "all", or "ephemeral"
  retentionMode: 'temporary'

  # Lifetime of temporary chats, in hours. Default 720 (30 days), range 1 to 8760.
  temporaryChatRetention: 720

  # Lifetime of regular chats under retentionMode "all", in hours. Defaults to temporaryChatRetention.
  # generalChatRetention: 2160

  # Under "all" or "ephemeral", keep files uploaded to agents from expiring.
  retainAgentFiles: false

A value outside 1 to 8760 hours in librechat.yaml fails config validation.

The deprecated TEMP_CHAT_RETENTION_HOURS environment variable also sets the temporary chat lifetime. interface.temporaryChatRetention wins when both are set. An invalid env value falls back to 720, and an out-of-range one is clamped to 1 or 8760 with a warning in the server log.

The three modes

temporary keeps existing behavior. Chats a user marks as temporary (with the toggle or the Temporary Chat by default setting) are hidden from history and search and deleted after temporaryChatRetention hours. Regular chats never expire.

all gives every conversation and message an expiry date without changing how chat looks to users: chats stay in history and search until they expire. Regular chats use generalChatRetention (or temporaryChatRetention if unset). Chats a user marks as temporary still behave as temporary chats. Uploaded files and shared links expire too; agent resource files are kept only with retainAgentFiles: true. Use this for a "keep everything for N days, then delete" policy.

ephemeral makes every chat temporary for the whole deployment. Every chat is hidden from history and search, gets no generated title, and is deleted after temporaryChatRetention hours; generalChatRetention is ignored. The Temporary Chat toggle is shown locked on for everyone, including roles without the TEMPORARY_CHAT permission, and its keyboard shortcut does nothing. The server enforces this, so a client asking to save a chat as permanent is overridden. Nothing is traced to Langfuse unless you set langfuse.trace.temporaryChats.

How deletion works

Each conversation and message carries an expiredAt date; temporary ones are also flagged isTemporary: true. Hidden and expired records are filtered out of the history list and the search index before they are deleted.

• Conversations, messages, and shared links are removed by a MongoDB TTL index on expiredAt. MongoDB runs this in the background, usually within about a minute of the deadline.
• Files are removed by a periodic sweep in LibreChat, which deletes the stored file (local disk, S3, and so on) and then its record.

The deadline is set when a record is saved. Each save of a conversation moves its deadline forward, so a chat in active use is not deleted. Each message keeps the deadline it got when it was saved.

Under all and ephemeral, retention applies wherever chat data is written: new messages, regenerations and branches, edits, feedback, artifact edits, resumed responses, forks, duplicates, and imports.

• Under ephemeral, forks, duplicates, and imports are always temporary. Under all, a copy of a temporary chat stays temporary, and other copies and imports stay visible with an expiry date.
• A shared link takes its expiry from its conversation, so it never outlives the chat.
• Memories have no expiry and are not affected by any mode.

Switching modes

Changing retentionMode or a retention period only affects records saved afterwards. Existing deadlines are not rewritten.

• To all or ephemeral: existing chats get a deadline the next time they are written to. Under ephemeral, an older regular chat that receives a new message, edit, feedback, or branch is converted to a temporary chat on the spot: it leaves history and search and loses its bookmarks. Chats nobody touches keep their current state.
• Back to temporary: chats saved under all keep their deadlines and will still be deleted. Chats saved under ephemeral stay temporary and keep expiring.

To stop regular chats from expiring after leaving all or ephemeral, clear their deadlines in mongosh:

db.conversations.updateMany(
  { isTemporary: false, expiredAt: { $ne: null } },
  { $unset: { expiredAt: 1 } },
)
db.messages.updateMany(
  { isTemporary: false, expiredAt: { $ne: null } },
  { $unset: { expiredAt: 1 } },
)

After upgrading, once the _meiliIndex_1_isTemporary_1_expiredAt_1 indexes exist on conversations and messages, you can drop the old _meiliIndex_1_expiredAt_1 indexes from both collections. MongoDB does not drop superseded indexes on its own.

Examples

Delete every chat 90 days after its last activity, keeping chats visible until then:

interface:
  retentionMode: 'all'
  generalChatRetention: 2160 # 90 days for regular chats
  temporaryChatRetention: 24 # 1 day for chats users mark as temporary

Make every chat temporary and delete it after 24 hours:

interface:
  retentionMode: 'ephemeral'
  temporaryChatRetention: 24

Make every chat temporary for a week, but keep files attached to agents:

interface:
  retentionMode: 'ephemeral'
  temporaryChatRetention: 168
  retainAgentFiles: true