Starting a Chat and Private Chats

New Chat has two behaviors: a tap creates a chat immediately, and a long press lets you choose exactly what it should use.

Quick create

Tapping New Chat skips the questions and opens a conversation right away:

• The Favorite connection, if you have set one.
• Otherwise the only chat target, if there is just one.
• Otherwise the chooser opens so you can pick.

Mark a connection as Favorite in Connections to make quick create predictable. The widget and share extension follow the same rule.

Direct connection and model shortcuts

Touch and hold New Chat to choose a connection or downloaded local chat model and start immediately. Connections show their default model and provider icon, with initials when a logo is unavailable.

The chat chooser

Choose Choose Model… when you want the full chooser. It is also in the overflow menu, and it appears as its own button when you have no chats yet.

The chooser lists every target in one place:

• Connections — your local-server and cloud providers.
• Local Models — models you have downloaded, which run entirely on this device.

You can also set the chat name, which is optional and generated for you if you leave it blank, and pick an instruction for the conversation.

Private chats

The chooser has a memory toggle in the top-right corner. Turning it off makes the new conversation a private chat, labeled as one before you create it.

A private chat never reads from on-device memory and never saves anything back to it. Nothing about the conversation enters your local knowledge store.

This is a per-chat setting, not a mode for the whole app. You can also change it later for an existing chat with Use Memory in This Chat in chat settings.

Private applies to memory only. A private chat still sends your messages to whichever provider the chat uses, so choose a Local Model if you want the generation itself to stay on device. See Privacy and Data.

Per-connection defaults

Each connection decides how its new chats start, so you do not have to set the same thing every time. In Connections, edit a connection to set:

• Enable Memory for New Chats — whether chats on this connection start with memory on or start private.
• Default Instruction — the instruction selected automatically for new chats.

The chooser applies these as soon as you pick that connection as the target, and you can still override them before creating the chat. A connection you use for sensitive work can default to private while everything else keeps memory on.

Troubleshooting

• If New Chat opens the chooser every time, set a Favorite connection.
• If a new chat starts with memory on when you expected private, check the connection's Enable Memory for New Chats setting.
• If an instruction keeps appearing, check the connection's Default Instruction.
• If Local Models is empty in the chooser, download a supported chat model first. See Local Models.