Temporary Chat

A temporary chat doesn't show up in your chat history or search, and LibreChat deletes it on its own after a while (30 days unless your admin changed it). Use one for a quick question or something you'd rather not keep around.

Start a temporary chat

On a new chat, before you send the first message, select the Temporary Chat button at the right end of the header (the hat-and-glasses icon), or press Ctrl+Shift+Y (Cmd+Shift+Y on macOS). On small screens it's in the header's menu, with a check mark when it's on.

While it's on, the welcome screen reads "This chat won't appear in your history and will be deleted automatically." and the message box is tinted.

Select the button again to switch back before you start. Once you send the first message, the button goes away and a Temporary Chat label stays in the header for the rest of the conversation. You can't turn an ongoing chat into a temporary one, or the other way around.

To make every new chat start as temporary, go to Settings > Chat and turn on Temporary Chat by default. The setting is saved in your browser, so set it on each device.

What's different about a temporary chat

• It isn't listed in the sidebar history and doesn't appear in search results.
• It doesn't get an automatically generated title.
• You can't bookmark, pin, archive, or move it into a project.
• It isn't sent to Langfuse for tracing, and rating its replies sends no feedback score, unless your admin opted in.
• It's stored on the server until its retention period ends, then deleted along with its messages, files, and any shared link to it. Closing the tab doesn't delete it. The period counts from the last time the chat was saved, so a chat you keep using isn't deleted while you use it.
• Forking it gives you another temporary chat.
• Memories saved during it are not deleted with it.

When the admin makes every chat temporary

Some instances make every conversation temporary. The button is then shown locked on and can't be switched off, its label reads "Temporary Chat is enabled for all chats by your administrator", and the keyboard shortcut does nothing.

Setup

Temporary chat is available to all users by default. Admins control who can use it with the TEMPORARY_CHAT role permission in the Admin Panel, and set how long chats are kept, or make every chat temporary, as described in Data Retention.