Set your preferences

Set your preferences

Make Chat feel like yours. Preferences let you choose how the interface looks, how much reasoning Chat applies by default, how messages behave as you type, and how you’re notified — all without touching anyone else’s setup. Your preferences apply only to your account and follow you wherever you sign in.

This guide shows you how to open Preferences, change each setting, and save your changes, plus what to do if something doesn’t stick.

Before you start

• You can change your own preferences at any time — no special role is required.
• Your personal preferences override your organization’s defaults where the two overlap. For example, if your admin set a default response style but you prefer something faster, your choice wins for you.
• A few settings appear only when your organization has turned them on (voice is the main one). If you don’t see a setting described below, it isn’t enabled for your account — that’s expected, not a bug.

Open your preferences

1. Click your profile or account menu, then choose Settings.
2. In the settings sidebar, select Preferences.

You’ll land on the User Preferences page, organized into clear sections. Changes you make here are held until you click Save, so you can adjust several things at once.

What you can change

Appearance

Set how Chat looks and reads for you.

Setting	What it does
Theme	Choose System (follow your device), Light, or Dark.
Text size	Pick Small, Medium, or Large to make messages easier to read.
High contrast	Increases contrast between text and background for better legibility.
Reduce motion	Minimizes animations and transitions across the interface.
Sidebar density	Choose how tightly your conversation list is packed. A denser layout fits more conversations on screen; a more relaxed one is easier to scan.

Chat behavior

Control how much reasoning Chat applies and how the message box responds as you type.

Setting	What it does
Default response style	Sets how much thinking Chat applies to a new conversation: Interactive Mode (fastest, direct answers), Thinking (multi-step reasoning), or Research (searches and reasons more deeply). Thinking is the default. You can still switch the style for any single message in the composer.
Send on Enter	When on, pressing Enter sends your message and Shift + Enter adds a new line. Turn it off if you’d rather Enter always start a new line.
Show timestamps	Shows the time next to each message in a conversation.

Tip: If you mostly want quick back-and-forth answers, set your default style to Interactive Mode and switch up to Thinking or Research only when a question needs it. See Choosing an assistant for when each style shines.

Notifications

Decide how and when Chat reaches you — for example when a workflow needs your approval or someone mentions you.

Setting	What it does
In-app notifications	Show alerts in Chat (the bell icon in the header).
Email notifications	Send notifications to your email.
Digest frequency	Get notified in real time, or batched into a periodic summary.
Quiet hours	Pause notifications during a daily window you set (for example, overnight).

Voice (when enabled)

If your organization has turned voice on, you’ll see a Voice section:

• Voice Input Mode — choose how the microphone activates: Disabled, Push-to-talk (hold a button while you speak), or Auto (start and stop listening by clicking the mic icon).
• Read Responses Aloud — when on, Chat speaks each assistant reply using text-to-speech.

If you don’t see this section, voice isn’t enabled for your account.

Save your changes

1. Make your edits in any of the sections above.
2. Click Save. You’ll see a confirmation that your settings were saved.

Until you save, your edits are held but not applied — so you can adjust several things at once and they all take effect together. If you navigate away with unsaved edits, Chat prompts you before you leave.

Worked example: a faster, quieter setup

Say you want snappy answers and a tidy sidebar:

1. Open Settings → Preferences.
2. Under Chat behavior, set Default response style to Interactive Mode.
3. Leave Send on Enter on so Enter sends and Shift + Enter adds a line.
4. Under Appearance, set Sidebar density to the most compact option to fit more conversations on screen.
5. Click Save.

New conversations now start in the fastest style, and your sidebar shows more at a glance. When a harder question comes up, just bump that one conversation to Thinking or Research from the composer.

Personalize your assistant, not just the interface

Preferences shape the app. To shape the answers — tone, length, the knowledge Chat draws on, and standing instructions like “always answer in British English” — use an Assistant instead. An assistant carries a system prompt, a persona, and linked knowledge, and you can switch between assistants per conversation. See Choosing an assistant to set that up.

Chat can also remember helpful facts and preferences from your conversations as Memories, which you review and manage under Settings → Memories. Personal memories are private to you. If you’d rather Chat didn’t pick these up automatically, turn off Remember details from my conversations in Preferences — you can still add and edit memories yourself.

What you can’t change here

Some settings live outside personal Preferences by design, so your whole organization stays consistent and secure:

• Organization defaults and policies — things like which response styles, models, and knowledge sources are available are managed by your administrator. Your personal preferences can override the optional ones, but the guardrails that keep Chat safe and compliant always apply.
• Who can see your conversations — sharing is controlled per conversation, not in Preferences. See Organize conversations.
• Account identity (name, email, sign-in) — these are handled through your account and your organization’s sign-in provider, not the Preferences page.

This separation is intentional: you get full control over your own experience, while the protections your organization relies on stay in place.

Troubleshooting

My change didn’t take effect. Make sure you clicked Save — changes are held until then. If you navigated away, you may have been prompted about unsaved changes; return to Preferences and save again.

A setting I expected isn’t there. Settings like Voice appear only when your organization has enabled them. If you need one that’s missing, ask your administrator.

My settings don’t appear on another device. Preferences follow your account, so sign in and give the page a moment to load. If they still look out of date, refresh the page or try again in a few minutes.

Related guides

• Choosing an assistant — shape tone, length, and the knowledge behind your answers.
• Organize conversations — pin, rename, archive, and group your chats.
• Saved prompts — reuse your favorite instructions as templates.