🧠 How to see and delete what ChatGPT remembers about you

What’s new: OpenAI’s newer memory system continually updates a hodgepodge of the stuff it thinks is most useful. Spoiler: It’s not always useful. A Memory Summary gets you a high-level view of that information, but it might not have everything ChatGPT remembers and uses from your chats.

Left alone, it becomes a junk drawer. Memory audits suggest a third to half of what’s stored is stale: the project you finished, the city you moved out of, the food preference you mentioned once at 11 p.m. “By the way, while you’re planning your family vacation, I know a great spot for crème brûlée!”

There’s a rough 24,000-word ceiling on memory, so old entries crowd out useful ones, and your answers get worse without you knowing why.

⏱️ The 60-second setup

📋 Read the profile first. Open any chat, and try this prompt: 

List everything you remember about me, including anything you inferred rather than something I told you directly. Put it in a table with three columns: the memory, whether I said it or you guessed it, and roughly when it came up. Then tell me which entries are probably out of date.

Read the whole list, including anything labeled as inferred or user insights. Once you can see which lines are guesses, deleting gets easy. Note what’s wrong or expired before you touch anything

Clean it up on web: Click your profile icon > Settings > Personalization > Memory > Scroll the list and delete outdated entries one by one.

Clean it up on mobile: Tap the menu icon > Settings > Personalization > Memory > Swipe left on any entry to delete it.

Menu names shift between app versions. If Personalization isn’t where you expect, check OpenAI’s memory help page rather than hunting blind.

📋 The power move for a full reset

Summarize every memory you hold about me into one short list of the 10 facts that actually improve your answers. Show me the list. After I approve it, forget everything else and save only those 10.

⚠️ The catch: The full picture, including inferred context, is a Plus and Pro thing. Free accounts can see and delete saved memories but not the assumptions built from chat history. Deleting a memory removes it from your profile, and OpenAI says it drops out of future responses, but it may still exist in data already collected, so treat delete as forget, not erase. 

One more thing: For anything you don’t want remembered at all, start a Temporary Chat using the dotted icon. Those skip memory completely. Medical questions, salary math, the ugly stuff. These chats may be kept for up to 30 days for safety.