How to delete Claude chats on the web, the apps, and Claude Code

The Morse teamPublished October 28, 20267 min read

To delete Claude chats on claude.ai, hover over a chat in the sidebar, click the ⋮ button, choose Delete, and confirm; to delete many at once, open Chats and tasks, choose Select, tick the chats or Select all, and click Delete. As of October 2026, Anthropic says a deleted chat leaves your history at once and its back-end storage "within 30 days." Memories Claude built from the chat, share links, feedback you sent, and Claude Code's files on your computer each need their own step.

We read Anthropic's help center and privacy center articles on deleting conversations, deleting accounts, exporting data, sharing, memory, incognito chats, and retention, plus the Claude Code docs, on October 23, 2026. Anthropic's consumer pages say how long it keeps each kind of data, which is more than most AI companies publish, and the full retention table is in is Claude private.

Should you export your Claude chats before deleting them?

Yes, if there's anything you might want later. Anthropic says account deletion is permanent and "you won't be able to recover your account or conversation data" (Anthropic), and its pages describe no undo for a single chat either.

Exports run only from Settings, then Privacy, then Export data, on the web app or Claude Desktop; "it's not possible to run an export from Claude for iOS or Android" (Anthropic). The download link goes to your account's email, needs you signed in, and expires 24 hours after it arrives. Anthropic says the export can't be imported into another personal Claude account.

How do I delete a Claude chat on the web?

Per Anthropic's article dated August 10, 2026 (Anthropic):

1. Open claude.ai and find the chat in the left sidebar, or click Chats and tasks for your full history.
2. Hover over the chat and click the ⋮ button on its right.
3. Choose Delete, then Delete again to confirm.

That article has sections for the web, iOS, and Android, and none for Claude Desktop. Anthropic's export and memory pages treat Desktop's settings like the web app's, and your history belongs to your account, so if you can't find a control in Desktop, delete the chat at claude.ai.

How do I delete Claude chats on iPhone and Android?

The two apps work differently (Anthropic):

• iOS: open your chat list, touch and hold the chat, tap Delete, and confirm. With a chat open, tap ⋯ in the top right, then Delete.
• Android: with a chat open, tap the ⋮ menu in the top right, then Delete, and confirm. To delete several, open your chat list, tap the checklist icon in the top right, tick each chat, tap the trash icon, and confirm.

Anthropic's article describes bulk deletion for Android and the web, but not for iOS. On an iPhone, delete a long list from claude.ai instead.

How do I delete all my Claude chats at once?

There is no single "delete all" setting. On the web, click Chats and tasks, hover over any chat, click ⋮, then Select. Click Select all at the top, then Delete, and confirm (Anthropic).

Deleting chats leaves the rest of your account. Anthropic says "projects and account information" are kept "until you delete it or delete your account."

How do I delete my Claude account?

If you pay for Pro or Max, cancel in Billing settings first and wait until the current period ends (Anthropic). Then:

• Web: click your initials or name in the lower left, choose Settings, then Account, and click Delete account.
• iOS: open Settings, tap Profile under Account, tap Delete account, then Delete.
• Android: tap the menu button in the upper left, tap your initials, then Profile. Under Account Actions, tap Delete Account, then I Understand.

Some accounts have to be closed by Anthropic's support team, and the account settings say so when that applies. If several accounts share one email, tell support which ones to delete. If you use Claude through a third party such as Quora's Poe or Slack, Anthropic says you request deletion from that service (Anthropic).

What does deleting a Claude chat leave behind?

Five things outlast the delete button, and you can clean up the first two yourself:

• Memories. Anthropic's memory page says "when a conversation expires or is deleted, related memory entries generated from it won't be removed" (Anthropic). Memory is on by default for Free, Pro, and Max. Delete individual memories in your memory settings, or choose Reset memory, which "permanently deletes all memories including project memories."
• Share links. A shared chat is a snapshot anyone with the link can view (Anthropic). Anthropic's sharing page doesn't say deleting the chat revokes the link, so unshare first: go to Settings, then Privacy, click Manage next to Shared chats, and click Unshare next to each one.
• Thumbs up or down. Rating a reply stores "the entire related conversation" for up to 5 years, de-linked from your user ID (Anthropic). Anthropic's pages describe no way to withdraw a rating.
• Training copies. With training on, a deleted chat stays in training runs "already in progress" (Anthropic).
• Flagged chats. A chat flagged under the Usage Policy is kept for up to 2 years whether or not you delete it (Anthropic).

Incognito chats have no delete button because they never enter your history, and Anthropic keeps them for 30 days anyway (Anthropic). Every retention period Anthropic publishes is in the table in is Claude private.

How do I delete Claude Code history?

Claude Code keeps two copies of a session. Anthropic's servers hold one under the same 30-day or 5-year rule as chats (Claude Code docs), and your computer holds the other, which the claude.ai buttons never touch.

On your machine, full transcripts sit in ~/.claude/projects/ as plaintext, "every message, tool call, and tool result" (Claude Code docs). Anthropic warns that if a tool reads a .env file, its values land in the transcript. Claude Code deletes transcripts after cleanupPeriodDays, 30 days by default, with two exceptions: history.jsonl, the list of prompts you've typed, is kept until you delete it, and transcripts of sessions started or last continued in Claude Desktop or Cowork are kept "at any age" unless you set desktopSessionCleanupPeriodDays.

To delete it yourself:

• Run claude purge <project path> to delete a project's transcripts, auto memory, and matching lines in history.jsonl. Add --dry-run to see the list first, or pass --all for every project. Before version 2.1.288 the command was claude project purge. Pasted images and session scratchpads live in a temp folder the purge doesn't touch.
• Set CLAUDE_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY to stop writing transcripts and prompt history at all.
• For Claude Code on the web, open a session, select the dropdown next to its title, and choose Delete, which "permanently removes the session and its data" (Claude Code docs).

Transcripts sent with /feedback, /bug, or /share are kept for 5 years, and one you agree to share after the session survey is kept for up to 6 months (Claude Code docs).

Where a Claude chat can still be found after you delete it

Built from Anthropic's pages as of October 23, 2026. Work down the rows you've used.

How to stop chasing copies of your chats

A Claude chat can leave copies in your history, your memories, a share link, a feedback store, and folders on your own computer, and each one has its own button, or none. On Morse, your chat history is stored only in your browser, encrypted, and Morse's servers don't keep messages or log their content (Morse privacy policy). Morse doesn't train AI on your chats, so there's no training data to wait out.

• Anonymous, for Claude without the account that holds those copies. Our proxy removes your account, email, and IP address and sends your message to Claude under Morse's own account. Anthropic sees the text without knowing it's you, and may keep it for a limited time to check for abuse, under its own policy.
• Private, the default, when you'd rather no host keep anything. Open-weight models like DeepSeek, Kimi, and GLM run on hosts that agreed to zero data retention.
• E2EE, when no one should read it. Morse's servers relay text they can't read. E2EE comes with Pro, at $19 a month.

Clearing your browser or deleting your account removes your chats for good, and Morse can't recover them, so keep anything you need. For the same cleanup on Grok, see how to delete Grok history, and for apps built not to keep chats at all, AI that doesn't save your data.

Try a chat from the Morse home page with no account, or start free and keep your Claude chats on your own device.