How to delete multiple ChatGPT chats at once (without deleting all of them)

Updated 5 November 2026

After a few months of ChatGPT, the sidebar fills up with test prompts, half-finished ideas and chats you'd rather not keep. ChatGPT gives you two built-in ways to clean up: delete chats one at a time, or delete every chat in one go. There's no built-in way to tick twenty chats and delete just those.

Here is every option, what each one actually does, and which to use.

The short answer

1. Delete chats one at a time

Hover over a chat in the sidebar, click the ⋯ button, choose Delete and confirm. It's fine for five chats. For fifty, it's three clicks and a wait each time.

2. Delete all chats

Click your profile picture › Settings › Data controls › Delete all chats. Every conversation in the account goes, including archived chats and chats inside Projects. There's no undo: OpenAI's help centre says deleted chats can't be restored by you or by support.

Use this when you really want a clean slate. If even one chat is worth keeping, export your data first (Data controls › Export data) or use one of the options below.

3. Archive all chats

In the same place, Archive all chats moves every chat out of the sidebar without deleting anything. You can see and restore them later under Settings › Data controls › Archived chats, and they still show up in search.

Archiving is the safe choice when your goal is a tidy sidebar rather than removing data.

4. Pick exactly which chats to delete

For "delete these 40, keep those 12", you need a tool that lists your chats with checkboxes. Several Chrome extensions do this. Many of the popular ones now cap the free version (the most-installed one allows 10 chats a day) or ask you to sign in first.

1. Install it from the Chrome Web Store and open chatgpt.com.
2. Click its toolbar icon (or press Alt Shift D). A panel lists all your chats with their last-updated date.
3. Tick the chats you want gone. Search by title to find "test" or "untitled" chats, and shift-click to select a whole range.
4. Click Archive or Delete, check the count in the confirm step, and let the progress bar finish.

It sends the same requests the ChatGPT site sends when you delete a chat by hand, paced so ChatGPT doesn't throttle you. (Deleting many chats quickly by hand can trigger a "too many requests" error; if that happens, wait a few minutes.) Chats you don't tick are never touched.

Archive or delete?

Archive hides a chat from the sidebar and keeps it; you can restore it any time. Delete removes it from your account straight away, and OpenAI says deleted chats are permanently removed from its systems within 30 days, apart from narrow security and legal exceptions.

If you're unsure, archive first. You can always delete the archived chats later. The full comparison, including what each does to ChatGPT's memory, is in ChatGPT archive vs delete.

What about the mobile apps?

The iOS and Android apps let you delete chats one by one, and the Data controls options above are there too. There's no multi-select on mobile. Anything you delete on the web disappears from the apps as well.

FAQ