Imagine the following scenario: You’re browsing something in incognito mode on your phone’s Google Chrome browser. For whatever reason, you need to hand over the phone to someone else, and at the last moment you remember that you don’t want that person to see the contents of your incognito tab. Awkward excuses and accusing looks ensue when you try to close the incognito tab before finally handing over the device.
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Good news: it’s being fixed. In an update on his official Chrome blog(opens in a new tab)Incognito sessions can be automatically locked when you quit Chrome, Google said. To enable the feature, go to Chrome Settings → Privacy & Security → turn on “Lock incognito tabs on closing Chrome”.
Now, if you have an incognito tab open on Chrome, you’ll need to unlock it to view the content the next time you open the browser, be it via facial recognition, the fingerprint scanner or a passcode.
The feature is already live on iOS, but is now rolling out to Android users as well (side note: when did Google first roll out the feature on iOS and Android?) It’s off by default, so it should be enabled. You have to manually enable it for this to work.
As for the usefulness of this feature: Look, we don’t know (or want to know) what you’re doing in incognito mode, but its very existence is about keeping users’ private sessions to themselves. This new option makes Incognito a bit more private, and considering that there are a lot of Chrome users(opens in a new tab) On Android, we think this will be useful to a lot of people.
