Claude Incognito Chat: What It Turns Off and What It Leaves On

Our own proposal: judge an incognito chat by what it leaves switched on, not by the ghost icon. It turns off history, memory and training, but your profile information, a 30 day safety copy and Team and Enterprise exports stay on. In our own Claude export, memory arrived as a separate part with 154 memory files, apart from the 272 conversations.

Start an incognito chat

Outside a project, click the ghost icon in the upper right of Claude. A black border and an Incognito chat label appear in the upper left, and the x in the upper right closes it. According to Anthropic's incognito chats page, checked November 8, 2026, an incognito chat is not saved to your chat history or to Claude's memory, and it is not used for training. A closed incognito chat cannot be reopened, and it cannot be converted into a regular chat.

Our own proposal: judge an incognito chat by what it leaves on

The ghost suggests one privacy switch. Anthropic's page describes several separate behaviors, and some of them stay on. We read each line and sorted it into off or on while the chat is incognito.

Three rows stay on: your profile information, the 30 day safety copy and the organization exports. That is the check we suggest before you type anything sensitive.

Incognito or memory off

They are different switches. To keep a chat but skip memory, turn off Memory in the plus menu before your first message. Claude then neither uses nor adds to memory, but the chat stays in your history and stays searchable. Incognito removes the chat from history as well. Our comparison of Claude memory and ChatGPT memory covers what the memory itself holds.

Inside a project, and the new Claude experience

Incognito is only available outside projects. In a project, turn memory off for a single chat instead. Anthropic also notes that incognito chats open in the previous chat experience, so Claude cannot create files or run code in them.

Can an employer see an incognito chat

Anthropic documents the case for organizations. On Team and Enterprise plans, incognito chats are included in organizational data exports available to account Owners, retained for 30 days for safety or longer under the organization's policy, and Enterprise adds them to the Compliance API. If you use Claude through work, treat an incognito chat as visible to your organization.

What our own export shows about where memory lives

We downloaded our real Claude export and read its layout. It came as seven zip parts. The conversations part held 272 conversations and 20,089 messages, and the memory sat in its own part with 154 memory files. Claude keeps memory apart from conversations, which is why one switch can skip memory while another removes the chat from history. The files are described in our guide to exporting Claude conversations.

Questions people ask

Is Claude incognito anonymous? Anthropic describes it as not saved to history or memory and not used for training. Profile information, the 30 day safety copy and organization exports are separate, as the table shows.

How do I leave incognito mode on Claude? Click the x in the upper right. The chat is closed and cannot be reopened.

Do incognito chats disappear? They leave your history when you close them. Anthropic retains them for 30 days by default for safety.

Can I save an incognito chat? No. It cannot be converted to a regular chat or saved to history.