Claude incognito chats do not appear in your chat history or contribute to Claude’s memory. They are available on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, according to Claude’s help center.
There is a difference between a chat you cannot see in history and data that is immediately deleted. Anthropic says incognito chats are retained for 30 days by default, or longer under an Enterprise organization’s custom retention setting. Team and Enterprise owners can include them in organizational data exports.
On this page
Start an incognito chat
Open a new chat outside a project and select the ghost icon in the upper-right corner. Claude shows a black border and an “Incognito chat” label when the mode is active. Start your conversation there.
When you are finished, use the X in the upper-right corner to close it. Save anything you want to keep first: Anthropic says a closed incognito chat cannot be reopened, converted into a regular chat or saved to history.
The ghost icon does not appear for a new chat inside a project. If your goal is only to prevent memory from being used in one project chat, Anthropic says you can turn Memory off in the + menu before sending the first message. That is a different setting.
What happens to memory and chat search?
An incognito chat does not use your existing Claude memory and is not added to future memory entries. Claude also does not retrieve it when searching past conversations. It is excluded from the monthly recap.
Profile information can still apply. Anthropic says Claude can access information such as custom styles and personal preferences in an incognito chat. If those settings matter to the task, check them rather than assuming that the session has no account context at all. Our guide to Claude custom instructions shows where those preferences are set.
Incognito versus turning memory off
| Incognito chat | Regular chat with Memory off | |
|---|---|---|
| Chat history | Not saved there | Remains in history |
| Existing memory | Not used | Not used for that chat |
| Future memory | Not added | Not added for that chat |
| Search across past chats | Not included | Can still be found |
To use the second option, turn Memory off before the first message. It is useful when you want to keep a conversation but do not want memory to affect it. Incognito is the option for a chat that should not appear in your history.
Retention and work accounts
Anthropic says incognito chats are not used for training. It also says they are retained for 30 days by default, or longer when an Enterprise organization sets a longer retention period. The absence of a history entry does not mean the service retains nothing.
On Team and Enterprise plans, organization owners can export incognito chats. Enterprise organizations can also access them through the Compliance API. If you use a work account, check your organization’s policies before putting sensitive material into any chat.
File and code limitations
Anthropic says that if you have the new Claude experience, an incognito chat opens in the previous chat experience. In that mode Claude cannot create files or run code. If you need either feature, check whether a regular chat and its available privacy controls fit the task instead.
