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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Look and response type tweaks enhance each 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 good distance since its introduction in 2022. Often, once we focus on enhancements, we speak about how the AI mannequin has gotten higher, safer, and smarter.
However for those who deconstruct the title ChatGPT, you are left with “chat” and “GPT,” the place GPT means generative, pre-trained transformer (that is the AI half). Right this moment, we will dig into the chat aspect, 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.
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I am utilizing ChatGPT in Chrome on my desktop. However lots of the suggestions I will share work in each the standalone ChatGPT apps and the cell variations. Additionally, I am going to present you some settings out there solely within the free and Go plan tiers, and others out there within the Plus and above tiers.
Let’s first begin with settings and get to them.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s guardian firm, filed an April 2025 lawsuit towards OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI methods.)
Accessing settings
You’ll be able to entry your settings by tapping your account title within the lower-left nook of your display. 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, probably not. However the OpenAI of us are in all probability spending much more time speaking to machines than to actual folks.
1. Customise look
You’ll be able to customise the looks of your chat expertise by way of the Basic tab of the Settings display.
You’ll be able to 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 effectively.
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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 out there to Plus customers and above is the power to decide on the mannequin ChatGPT makes use of. You’ll be able to 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 can 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 just lately utilizing from the legacy listing. For instance, when 5.5 comes out, I am going to 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.
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The opposite selection I typically make is to modify between Auto and Pondering. I often like Auto as a result of if there is a quick reply to a simple query, why wait? ChatGPT will select the mannequin greatest suited to the query. However generally I wish to be certain it takes additional time to assume by a solution, often for a more durable or extra nuanced query. Then I swap to the Pondering mannequin.
3. Customise ChatGPT’s persona
Let me be completely clear: I don’t, ever, need my AI to have a persona. I do not need it to be additional pleasant, additional nerdy, additional cynical, and I certain as heck don’t desire it to be additional quirky. That’s my concept of hell. Many distributors are attempting to extend the perkiness of their AIs (I am you, Alexa+), considering they will be extra interesting to customers. I am really fairly grateful that OpenAI consists of settings that allow me flip these choices off.
Alternatively, my spouse, who has her personal ChatGPT Plus account, prefers ChatGPT to be heat and pleasant, so she’s set her base type 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 persona, go to the Personalization tab, change its general base type, after which tune its traits. One fascinating choice is Headers & Lists. You’ll be able to tweak whether or not ChatGPT presents its solutions extra in listing kind or as paragraphs.
4. Train 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 potential about you) in order that it could actually higher work together with you and be your buddy (shudder).
The best way you educate 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 would want to keep away from as a result of I actually don’t desire ChatGPT to commonly say, “I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I can not try this”. That is a bit too life-imitates-art for me.
It’s also possible to present particulars about your occupation and extra about your self. If you’d like ChatGPT to behave as if it “will get you,” that is the place you begin.
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It is a case the place, for me, leaving the setting clean is itself a rigorously thought of selection. As a result of I am continually testing, I do not need the chatbot to begin with customized details about me, as a result of that will tie its responses extra to my story and make it tougher to generalize after I’m speaking about ChatGPT for you.
Additionally, there is a part referred to as “Customized Directions” that helps you tune ChatGPT even additional. I am going to provide you with 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 form of relying on it being a one-and-done reply machine. However over time, I discovered it useful to provide it a body of reference for a few of its responses.
All of that’s managed within the Reminiscence part of the Personalization tab (method on the backside of the scroll). As you’ll be able to see, you’ll be able to enable it to reference saved reminiscences. Which means as you chat with it, it’s going to make notes of issues it thinks will probably be vital later.
You’ll be able to let it reference browser reminiscences. If you happen to use ChatGPT Atlas (OpenAI’s AI-enabled browser), ChatGPT can entry particulars out of your shopping expertise.
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It could 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 could bear in mind. Happily, you’ll be able to search older chats.
You’ll be able to 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 high of the display allows you to go in and take away reminiscences that ChatGPT has saved. I do that generally after 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 fascinated about or concerned in after I’m really not.
The opposite button is the Document 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, nevertheless it’s vastly useful, and I exploit it nearly on daily basis. That is the power 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 just lately been doing a whole lot of work with native AI coding fashions, so I pinned my questions and dialogue about that to the highest of my dialog listing. That is the Goose Ollama Qwen3 chat. It is tax time, so the dialog about tax data will in all probability be there for an additional few weeks. And, lastly, I am interested by entering into welding, in order I discover the subject, I am maintaining that chat reside on the high. Spoiler alert: my spouse is just not thrilled with the concept, so the closest I’d get to a welding rig might effectively simply be this chat.
7. Promoting choices
Lastly, let’s return into the Settings interface for a brand-new “function” launched earlier this 12 months: in-app promoting. They need to pay for all that {hardware} one way or the other, proper?
Advertisements will seem for customers within the free and $8/mo Go tiers. You’ll be able to management some facets of how advertisements behave by utilizing the Advert Controls tab in settings. Sure, I do know the tab is technically “Advertisements controls,” nevertheless it hurts my editor-soul to sort that.
Advertisements are so new that I have never seen them in my free check account but. Historical past and Pursuits choice choices aren’t populated but, so I can not actually present you what these sections appear to be.
As soon as OpenAI has been displaying advertisements for some time, you can tune advertisements to your pursuits or delete the info it makes use of to personalize advertisements. The Delete button will clear all that historical past.
It’s also possible to activate or off the Personalize Advertisements and Previous Chats, and Reminiscence choices. Each assist ChatGPT tune the advertisements you are served to your pursuits. There are arguments to be made each for turning these on or for turning them off.
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If you happen to flip them on, you are extra prone to be marketed to with one thing you care about. However for those who do not wish to spend a lot, and you do not wish to be tempted, flip the choices off. Alternatively, for those who’d want to not have your time wasted with wildly irrelevant advertisements, you may wish to flip these options on.
Sadly, even for those who flip off personalization, ChatGPT’s documentation says advertisements will nonetheless be customized to the thread you are at present working in. My most up-to-date thread was after I labored on a Goose AI article, so I am actually interested by whether or not I would get advertisements about AI or advertisements from Bass Professional.
Bonus tip: Examine 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 wish 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, persona, or advert controls to raised match how you’re employed? Do you favor a extra personalized, context-aware expertise, or do you retain most personalization options turned off? And for those who’re on a paid tier, do you discover the extra mannequin and configuration choices price it? Tell us within the feedback under.
You’ll be able to comply with my day-to-day venture updates on social media. You’ll want to subscribe to my weekly replace e-newsletter, and comply with 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.
