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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Look and response fashion tweaks enhance day by 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, after we focus on enhancements, we discuss how the AI mannequin has gotten higher, safer, and smarter.
However when you deconstruct the identify ChatGPT, you are left with “chat” and “GPT,” the place GPT means generative, pre-trained transformer (that is the AI half). At present, we’ll dig into the chat facet, as a result of ChatGPT has change into 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’ll share work in each the standalone ChatGPT apps and the cellular variations. Additionally, 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 learn how to get to them.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s father or mother firm, filed an April 2025 lawsuit towards OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in coaching and working its AI programs.)
Accessing settings
You’ll be able to entry your settings by tapping your account identify within the lower-left nook of your display. Discover there are menu objects for Personalization and Settings.
These each go to the identical settings panel. The one distinction is that Settings opens the Common tab, whereas Personalization opens the Personalization tab.
Did these must be two menu objects? No, not likely. 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 Common tab of the Settings display.
You’ll be able to select between darkish and light-weight mode (proven at 1). I’ve mine set to System, so if I change 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 obtainable to Plus customers and above is the flexibility to decide on the mannequin ChatGPT makes use of. You’ll be able to flip this on by toggling Present Extra Fashions on the Common tab (marked 3 within the screenshot above).
When you activate Present Extra 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 usually go to this menu and select the mannequin I have been most lately utilizing from the legacy listing. 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.
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The opposite alternative I usually make is to change between Auto and Considering. I often 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 be certain it takes further time to suppose by means of a solution, often for a more durable or extra nuanced query. Then I change to the Considering 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 further pleasant, further nerdy, further cynical, and I positive as heck don’t need it to be further quirky. That’s my concept of hell. Many distributors try to extend the perkiness of their AIs (I am you, Alexa+), considering they’re going to be extra interesting to customers. I am really fairly grateful that OpenAI contains settings that permit 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 fashion to Pleasant, and adjusted 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 total base fashion, 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 type or as paragraphs.
4. Educate it about your self
If you realize something in any respect about ChatGPT and its AI chatbot buddies, it is that they are obsequious as heck. ChatGPT desires to know your identify (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 educate ChatGPT your identify 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 desire to keep away from as a result of I actually don’t need ChatGPT to often say, “I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I can not try this”. That is just a little too life-imitates-art for me.
You can even present particulars about your occupation and extra about your self. In order for you 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 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 tougher to generalize once 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 will provide you with some useful recommendations on establishing 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 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 (manner on the backside of the scroll). As you possibly can see, you possibly can enable it to reference saved reminiscences. Which means as you chat with it, it’ll make notes of issues it thinks might be essential later.
You’ll be able to let it reference browser reminiscences. For those who use ChatGPT Atlas (OpenAI’s AI-enabled browser), ChatGPT can entry particulars out of your looking expertise.
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It will probably additionally delve into your chat historical past, although I’ve discovered this to be significantly unreliable. It usually remembers issues I do not need it to, and forgets conversations I had hoped it could bear in mind. Thankfully, you possibly can 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 helps 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 serious 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 outdoors the Settings interface, nevertheless it’s massively useful, and I take advantage of it virtually daily. That is the flexibility to pin as much as three conversations to the highest of your dialog historical past.
I dip into ChatGPT as usually as I do a Google search (which is to say 10, 20, even 50 instances 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 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 occupied with entering into welding, in order I discover the subject, I am preserving that chat dwell on the high. Spoiler alert: my spouse just isn’t thrilled with the thought, so the closest I’d get to a welding rig could 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 should 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 features 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 kind that.
Advertisements are so new that I have never seen them in my free take a look at account but. Historical past and Pursuits choice choices aren’t populated but, so I can not actually present you what these sections appear like.
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.
You can even 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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For those who flip them on, you are extra more likely to be marketed to with one thing you care about. However when you do not need to spend a lot, and you do not need to be tempted, flip the choices off. However, when you’d desire to not have your time wasted with wildly irrelevant advertisements, you would possibly need to flip these options on.
Sadly, even when you flip off personalization, ChatGPT’s documentation says advertisements will nonetheless be personalised to the thread you are at present 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 advertisements about AI or advertisements from Bass Professional.
Bonus tip: Examine Settings often
OpenAI is often tweaking ChatGPT. The builders usually add new options to the Settings interface. So verify in on it often to see if there are any new options you would possibly need to use.
What’s your favourite?
Have you ever explored ChatGPT’s settings these days, 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 when you’re on a paid tier, do you discover the extra mannequin and configuration choices value it? Tell us within the feedback beneath.
You’ll be able to comply with my day-to-day venture updates on social media. You should definitely subscribe to my weekly replace publication, 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.
