Stop using ChatGPT on factory settings: 7 tweaks I use to make it a pro tool

Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.

ZDNET's key takeaways

• Appearance and response style tweaks improve daily usability.
• New ad controls let free and Go users limit personalization.
• Memory and history toggles shape privacy and better context.

ChatGPT has come a long way since its introduction in 2022. Usually, when we discuss improvements, we talk about how the AI model has gotten better, safer, and smarter.

But if you deconstruct the name ChatGPT, you're left with "chat" and "GPT," where GPT means generative, pre-trained transformer (that's the AI part). Today, we're going to dig into the chat side, because ChatGPT has become a far more full-featured AI chat app than it was back when it first launched.

Also: I tried a Claude Code rival that's local, open source, and completely free - how it went

I'm using ChatGPT in Chrome on my desktop. But many of the tips I'm going to share with you work in both the standalone ChatGPT apps and the mobile versions. Also, I'll show you some settings available only in the free and Go plan tiers, and others available in the Plus and above tiers.

Let's first start with settings and how to get to them.

Accessing settings

You can access your settings by tapping your account name in the lower-left corner of your screen. Notice there are menu items for Personalization and Settings.

These both go to the same settings panel. The only difference is that Settings opens the General tab, while Personalization opens the Personalization tab.

Did these need to be two menu items? No, not really. But the OpenAI folks are probably spending a lot more time talking to machines than to real people.

1. Customize appearance

You can customize the appearance of your chat experience via the General tab of the Settings screen.

You can choose whether you want dark or light mode (shown at 1). I have mine set to System, so if I switch my Mac to dark mode, ChatGPT's interface will change as well.

One of the smaller quality-of-life features is the accent color (shown at 2). I changed mine to green, so my prompts stand out nicely from the AI's responses.

2. Choose your model

A very powerful feature available to Plus users and above is the ability to choose the model ChatGPT uses. You can turn this on in the Show Additional Models toggle on the General tab (shown at 3 in the screenshot above).

Once you turn on Show Additional Models, you'll be able to access the drop-down model picker from the upper left of the chat window.

When ChatGPT releases a new model, I often go up to this menu and choose the model I've been most recently using from the legacy list. For example, when 5.3 comes out, I'll initially set my model to the legacy 5.2 model. This is because I like to do some testing with the new model and get used to it before I rely on it for my day-to-day work.

Also: The best free AI courses and certificates for upskilling in 2026 - and I've tried them all

The other choice I often make is to switch between Auto and Thinking. I usually like Auto because if there's a fast answer to an easy question, why wait? ChatGPT will choose the model that's best for the question. But sometimes I want to be sure it takes extra time to think through an answer, usually for a tougher or more nuanced question. Then I switch to the Thinking model.

By the way, see GPT-4o there? Take one last look at it, because it's going away within the next few days.

3. Customize ChatGPT's personality

Let me be perfectly clear: I do not, ever, want my AI to have a personality. I don't want it to be extra friendly, extra nerdy, extra cynical, and I sure as heck don't want it to be extra quirky. That is my idea of hell. Many vendors are trying to increase the perkiness of their AIs (I'm looking at you, Alexa+), thinking they'll be more appealing to users. I'm actually quite grateful that OpenAI includes settings that let me turn those options off.

On the other hand, my wife who has her own ChatGPT Plus account, prefers ChatGPT to be warm and friendly, so she's set her base style to Friendly, and changed her Warm option to More (Friendlier and more personable). She likes how ChatGPT feels supportive during conversations with those settings turned on.

If you want to change ChatGPT's personality, go to the Personalization tab, change its overall base style, and then tune its characteristics. One interesting option is Headers & Lists. You can tweak whether ChatGPT presents its answers more in list form or as paragraphs.

4. Teach it about yourself

If you know nothing else about ChatGPT and its AI chatbot buddies, it's that they're obsequious as heck. ChatGPT wants to know your name (and as much as possible about you) so that it can better interact with you and be your friend (shudder).

The way you teach ChatGPT your name is to scroll down on the Personalization tab until you get to the About You section.

Go ahead and fill in your nickname if you'd like -- something else I'd prefer to avoid because I really don't want ChatGPT to regularly say, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that". That's a little too life-imitates-art for me.

You can also provide details about your occupation and more about yourself. If you want ChatGPT to act as if it "gets you," this is where you start.

Also: How I personalized my ChatGPT conversations - why it's a game changer

This is a case where, for me, leaving the setting blank is itself a carefully considered choice. Because I'm constantly testing, I don't want the chatbot to start with personalized information about me, because that would tie its responses more to my story and make it harder to generalize when I'm talking about ChatGPT for you.

Also, there's a section called "Custom Instructions," which helps you tune ChatGPT even more. I'll give you some helpful tips on constructing custom instructions in a later article.

5. Help it retain context

When ChatGPT first started to reference previous chats, it really weirded me out. I was kind of counting on it being a one-and-done answer machine. But over time, I found it was helpful for it to have a frame of reference for some of its responses.

All of that is controlled in the Memory section of the Personalization tab (way at the bottom of the scroll). As you can see, you can allow it to reference saved memories. This means that as you chat with it, it will make notes of things it thinks will be important later.

You can let it reference browser memories. If you use ChatGPT Atlas (OpenAI's AI-enabled browser), ChatGPT can access details from your browsing experience.

Also: The best AI chatbots of 2026: Expert tested and reviewed

It can also delve into your chat history, although I've found this to be particularly unreliable. It often remembers things I don't want it to, and forgets conversations I had hoped it would remember. Fortunately, you can search older chats.

You can turn each of these capabilities on or off with the toggle buttons.

Two other features may be of interest. The Manage button at the top of the screen enables you to actually go in and remove memories that ChatGPT has stored. I do this sometimes when I'm researching an article, and ChatGPT has decided that some random topic I had to look up once for reference is something that I'm deeply interested in or involved in when I'm actually not.

The other button is the Record Mode button. This has to do with ChatGPT's management of meetings and recordings.

6. Pinning conversations

This next "setting" actually lives outside the Settings interface, but it's hugely helpful and I use it almost every day. That's the ability to pin up to three conversations to the top of your conversation history.

I dip into ChatGPT as often as I do a Google search (which is to say 10, 20, even 50 times a day). Each creates a new session. But if there's a topic I'm working on for a while (like taxes), I can now pin that conversation to the top so I can refer back to it easily.

In my case, I've recently been doing a lot of work with local AI coding models, so I pinned my questions and discussion about that to the top of my conversation list. That's the Goose Ollama Qwen3 chat. It's tax time, so the conversation about tax information will probably be there for another few weeks. And, finally, I'm thinking about getting into welding, so as I explore the topic, I'm keeping that chat live at the top. Spoiler alert: my wife is not thrilled with the idea, so the closest I might get to a welding rig may well just be this chat.

7. Advertising options

Finally, let's go back into the Settings interface for a brand-new "feature" launched in the past week: in-app advertising. They have to pay for all that hardware somehow, right?

Ads will appear for users in the free and $8/mo Go tiers. You can control some aspects of how ads behave by using the Ad Controls tab in settings. Yes, I know the tab is technically "Ads controls," but it hurts my editor-soul to type that.

Ads are so new that I haven't yet seen them in my free test account. History and Interests selection options aren't populated yet, so I can't really show you what those sections look like.

Once OpenAI has been displaying ads for a while, you'll be able to tune ads to your interests or delete the data it uses to personalize ads. The Delete button will clear all that history.

You can also turn on or off the Personalize Ads and Past Chats and Memory options. Both of these serve to help ChatGPT tune the ads you're served to your interests. There's an argument to be made both for turning these on or for turning them off.

Also: How to install and configure Claude Code, step by step

If you turn them on, you're more likely to be advertised to with something you care about. But if you don't want to spend much, and you don't want to be tempted, turn the options off. On the other hand, if you'd prefer not to have your time wasted with wildly irrelevant ads, you might want to turn these features on.

Unfortunately, even if you turn off personalization, ChatGPT's documentation says ads will still be personalized to the thread you're currently working in. My most recent thread was when I working on a Goose AI article, so I'm really curious about whether I'd get ads about AI or ads from Bass Pro.

Bonus tip: Check Settings regularly

OpenAI is regularly tweaking ChatGPT. The developers often add new features to the Settings interface. So check in on it regularly to see if there are any new features you might want to use.

What's your favorite?

Have you explored ChatGPT's settings lately, or are you still using the defaults? Have you adjusted things like model selection, memory, personality, or ad controls to better match how you work? Do you prefer a more customized, context-aware experience, or do you keep most personalization features turned off? And if you're on a paid tier, do you find the additional model and configuration options worth it? Let us know in the comments below.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

Featured