These 7 handy ChatGPT settings are off by default – here’s what you’re missing

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Look and response model tweaks enhance every day usability.
• New advert controls let free and Go customers restrict personalization.
• Reminiscence and historical past toggles form privateness and higher context.

ChatGPT has come a great distance since its introduction in 2022. Often, once we talk about enhancements, we discuss how the AI mannequin has gotten higher, safer, and smarter.

However should you deconstruct the title ChatGPT, you are left with “chat” and “GPT,” the place GPT means generative, pre-trained transformer (that is the AI half). As we speak, we will dig into the chat facet, as a result of ChatGPT has turn out to be a much more full-featured AI chat app than it was again when it first launched.

I am utilizing ChatGPT in Chrome on my desktop. However most of the ideas I’ll share work in each the standalone ChatGPT apps and the cellular variations. Also, I will present you some settings obtainable solely within the free and Go plan tiers, and others obtainable within the Plus and above tiers.

Let’s first begin with settings and how one can get to them.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s dad or mum firm, filed an April 2025 lawsuit towards OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI methods.)

Accessing settings

You may entry your settings by tapping your account title within the lower-left nook of your display screen. Discover there are menu gadgets for Personalization and Settings.

These each go to the identical settings panel. The one distinction is that Settings opens the Basic tab, whereas Personalization opens the Personalization tab.

Did these must be two menu gadgets? No, not likely. However the OpenAI of us are in all probability spending much more time speaking to machines than to actual individuals.

1. Customise look

You may customise the looks of your chat expertise by way of the Basic tab of the Settings display screen.

You may select between darkish and lightweight mode (proven at 1). I’ve mine set to System, so if I swap my Mac to darkish mode, ChatGPT’s interface will change as properly.

One of many smaller quality-of-life options is the accent coloration (proven at 2). I modified mine to inexperienced, so my prompts stand out properly from the AI’s responses.

2. Select your mannequin

A really highly effective function obtainable to Plus customers and above is the flexibility to decide on the mannequin ChatGPT makes use of. You may flip this on by toggling Present Further Fashions on the Basic tab (marked 3 within the screenshot above).

When you activate Present Further Fashions, you’ll entry the drop-down mannequin picker from the higher left of the chat window.

When ChatGPT releases a brand new mannequin, I typically go to this menu and select the mannequin I have been most not too long ago utilizing from the legacy record. For instance, when 5.5 comes out, I will initially set my mannequin to the legacy 5.4 mannequin. It’s because I like to check the brand new mannequin and get used to it earlier than counting on it for my day-to-day work.

The opposite alternative I typically make is to modify between Auto and Considering. I normally like Auto as a result of if there is a quick reply to a straightforward query, why wait? ChatGPT will select the mannequin greatest suited to the query. However typically I need to make sure it takes additional time to suppose by a solution, normally for a more durable or extra nuanced query. Then I swap to the Considering mannequin.

3. Customise ChatGPT’s character

Let me be completely clear: I don’t, ever, need my AI to have a character. I do not need it to be additional pleasant, additional nerdy, additional cynical, and I certain as heck don’t need it to be additional quirky. That’s my thought of hell. Many distributors are attempting to extend the perkiness of their AIs (I am you, Alexa+), pondering they will be extra interesting to customers. I am really fairly grateful that OpenAI consists of settings that allow me flip these choices off.

However, my spouse, who has her personal ChatGPT Plus account, prefers ChatGPT to be heat and pleasant, so she’s set her base model to Pleasant, and altered her Heat choice to Extra (Friendlier and extra personable). She likes how ChatGPT feels supportive throughout conversations with these settings turned on.

If you wish to change ChatGPT’s character, go to the Personalization tab, change its general base model, after which tune its traits. One attention-grabbing possibility is Headers & Lists. You may tweak whether or not ChatGPT presents its solutions extra in record kind or as paragraphs.

4. Educate it about your self

If you recognize something in any respect about ChatGPT and its AI chatbot buddies, it is that they are obsequious as heck. ChatGPT needs to know your title (and as a lot as attainable about you) in order that it could possibly higher work together with you and be your buddy (shudder).

The way in which you train ChatGPT your title is to scroll down the Personalization tab till you attain the About You part.

Go forward and fill in your nickname if you would like — one thing else I might favor to keep away from as a result of I actually don’t need ChatGPT to commonly say, “I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I am unable to do this”. That is slightly too life-imitates-art for me.

You can too present particulars about your occupation and extra about your self. If you would like ChatGPT to behave as if it “will get you,” that is the place you begin.

It is a case the place, for me, leaving the setting clean is itself a fastidiously thought of alternative. As a result of I am continuously testing, I do not need the chatbot to begin with personalised details about me, as a result of that will tie its responses extra to my story and make it more durable to generalize once I’m speaking about ChatGPT for you.

Also, there is a part known as “Customized Directions” that helps you tune ChatGPT even additional. I will offer you some useful tips about developing customized directions in one other article.

5. Assist it retain context

When ChatGPT first began to reference earlier chats, it actually weirded me out. I used to be sort of relying on it being a one-and-done reply machine. However over time, I discovered it useful to present it a body of reference for a few of its responses.

All of that’s managed within the Reminiscence part of the Personalization tab (means on the backside of the scroll). As you may see, you may permit it to reference saved reminiscences. Because of this as you chat with it, it’s going to make notes of issues it thinks will likely be necessary later.

You may let it reference browser reminiscences. If you happen to use ChatGPT Atlas (OpenAI’s AI-enabled browser), ChatGPT can entry particulars out of your searching expertise.

It might additionally delve into your chat historical past, although I’ve discovered this to be notably unreliable. It typically remembers issues I do not need it to, and forgets conversations I had hoped it will bear in mind. Fortuitously, you may search older chats.

You may flip every of those capabilities on or off with the toggle buttons.

Two different options could also be of curiosity. The Handle button on the prime of the display screen permits you to go in and take away reminiscences that ChatGPT has saved. I do that typically once I’m researching an article, and ChatGPT has determined that some random matter I needed to lookup as soon as for reference is one thing that I am deeply excited about or concerned in once I’m really not.

The opposite button is the File Mode button. This has to do with ChatGPT’s administration of conferences and recordings.

6. Pinning conversations

This subsequent “setting” really lives exterior the Settings interface, but it surely’s vastly useful, and I take advantage of it virtually day-after-day. That is the flexibility to pin as much as three conversations to the highest of your dialog historical past.

I dip into ChatGPT as typically as I do a Google search (which is to say 10, 20, even 50 occasions a day). Every creates a brand new session. But when there is a matter I am engaged on for some time (like taxes), I can now pin that dialog to the highest so I can refer again to it simply.

In my case, I’ve not too long ago been doing a variety of work with native AI coding fashions, so I pinned my questions and dialogue about that to the highest of my dialog record. That is the Goose Ollama Qwen3 chat. It is tax time, so the dialog about tax data will in all probability be there for one more few weeks. And, lastly, I am enthusiastic about moving into welding, in order I discover the subject, I am preserving that chat stay on the prime. Spoiler alert: my spouse will not be thrilled with the thought, so the closest I would get to a welding rig might properly simply be this chat.

7. Promoting choices

Lastly, let’s return into the Settings interface for a brand-new “function” launched earlier this yr: in-app promoting. They must pay for all that {hardware} in some way, proper?

Adverts will seem for customers within the free and $8/mo Go tiers. You may management some points of how adverts behave through the use of the Advert Controls tab in settings. Sure, I do know the tab is technically “Adverts controls,” but it surely hurts my editor-soul to kind that.

Adverts are so new that I have not seen them in my free check account but. Historical past and Pursuits choice choices aren’t populated but, so I am unable to actually present you what these sections appear like.

As soon as OpenAI has been displaying adverts for some time, you’ll tune adverts to your pursuits or delete the info it makes use of to personalize adverts. The Delete button will clear all that historical past.

You can too activate or off the Personalize Adverts and Previous Chats, and Reminiscence choices. Each assist ChatGPT tune the adverts you are served to your pursuits. There are arguments to be made each for turning these on or for turning them off.

If you happen to flip them on, you are extra prone to be marketed to with one thing you care about. However should you do not need to spend a lot, and you do not need to be tempted, flip the choices off. However, should you’d favor to not have your time wasted with wildly irrelevant adverts, you may need to flip these options on.

Sadly, even should you flip off personalization, ChatGPT’s documentation says adverts will nonetheless be personalised to the thread you are at the moment working in. My most up-to-date thread was once I labored on a Goose AI article, so I am actually interested in whether or not I might get adverts about AI or adverts from Bass Professional.

Bonus tip: Verify Settings commonly

OpenAI is commonly tweaking ChatGPT. The builders typically add new options to the Settings interface. So test in on it commonly to see if there are any new options you may need to use.

What’s your favourite?

Have you ever explored ChatGPT’s settings recently, or are you continue to utilizing the defaults? Have you ever adjusted issues like mannequin choice, reminiscence, character, or advert controls to raised match how you’re employed? Do you like a extra custom-made, context-aware expertise, or do you retain most personalization options turned off? And should you’re on a paid tier, do you discover the extra mannequin and configuration choices price it? Tell us within the feedback beneath.

You may observe my day-to-day undertaking updates on social media. You’ll want to subscribe to my weekly replace e-newsletter, and observe me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Fb at Fb.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.