How to Always Open Your Browser in Incognito Mode
You’re no doubt aware of your browser’s incognito mode : a special browser state in which the software doesn’t track your activities in as much detail. Most of us will use our browsers normally most of the time and switch to incognito mode when necessary – perhaps when we need to find something we don’t want to remain recorded and included in our browsing history .
However, you can also run the browser in incognito mode from the start on both your desktop and mobile device. This means you leave behind less of a digital footprint and may be better suited to you as your default way of working.
How does incognito mode work?
Any time you use incognito mode (or private mode), you need to know what’s being tracked and what’s not when it comes to your online activity. Simply put, your incognito browser won’t log the sites you’ve visited or the searches you’ve done. It also doesn’t store cookies, those little data files that websites use to remember who you are (if you clear your browser cookies, you’ll have to sign in to all your online accounts again).
So, if you close a tab while in incognito mode, you can’t do the usual trick of bringing it back again: your browser has already forgotten it exists. It’s best used when you don’t want searches and site visits to reappear later—whether you’re researching a sensitive medical issue or buying a secret or surprise gift for a loved one.
However, incognito mode does not prevent your ISP from seeing what you are doing (you will need a VPN for this). If you’re at work, your employer can still see the sites you load. And if you log in anywhere—Google, Amazon, Facebook—your activity will still be logged on those sites as usual. This is not something that makes you completely anonymous.
If you don’t want your online activity to be remembered at all, you’ll need to take other steps beyond using incognito mode, such as using tools provided by Google to automatically remove evidence of where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing. j. If you understand how incognito mode works, this is a useful option.
Run in incognito mode on desktop
To run Chrome or Edge in incognito mode on Windows, you first need to create a shortcut on your desktop—the easiest way to do this is to drag the app’s icon from the Start menu onto an empty part of your desktop. Then right-click the shortcut you just created and select Show advanced options and properties .
In the “Target” field you will see the path to the browser program. All you have to do is add text (called a flag) to this path to make the browser launch in incognito mode. In Chrome, add “-incognito” at the end without quotes, outside the quotes pointing to the actual browser file. In Edge, it’s a space and then “private” (without quotes) at the end of the quoted file path.
Firefox makes this a little easier: Click the three horizontal lines (top right), then Settings and Privacy & Security , then check the Always use private browsing mode box. In all three browsers, you can also right-click the browser icon in the taskbar to open an incognito window—so if the browser is pinned to the taskbar, this is another way to launch it in private mode.
On macOS in Safari, you can open the Safari menu, then click Preferences and open the General tab to find the appropriate setting: Make sure Safari opens with the drop-down menu set to New Personal Window , and every time When launched in the browser, you will first see a personal window.
For other browsers on macOS, you’ll need to use the script editor, which you’ll find in the Utilities folder in the Applications pane in Finder. Select New Document and you need to enter a specific line of text: for Chrome it’s “do Shell script “open -a /Applications/Google\\Chrome.app –args –incognito”” and for Edge it’s “do script shell “open -a /Applications/Microsoft\\Edge.app -n –args –inprivate”” (in Firefox you can use the setting already mentioned).
Select File and Save , give the new file a name with the extension “.app” and make sure that “App” is selected as the file format . This new browser shortcut appears in the Applications panel, and from there you can place it in the Dock, drag it to your desktop, or place it anywhere else.
Running in incognito mode on a mobile device
If you want to launch your browser app of choice in incognito mode on your phone or tablet, the secret is a long press. On Android, most browsers, including Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, display some kind of option to launch a tab in incognito mode if you long-press their icon on the Home screen or app drawer.
Those of you with an iPhone or iPad will also see an incognito mode option when you long-press the icons for most browsers on your home screens or app library, including Safari, Edge, and Firefox. In Google Chrome, the option actually says “Search in Incognito Mode” , but this opens a regular Incognito window – you can run a search, but you can also just enter a website URL or whatever you need to do.