Sometimes I forget to enable incognito mode when I’m browsing, and well that can get a little hairy especially if you are looking at sites you shouldn’t be. Nonetheless here is a quick and fast way to enable incognito mode with one click.
What is Incognito Mode
Incognito Mode is a private browsing mode that doesn’t record any history or downloads you’ve acquired during your use of this mode. Also any cookies that have been downloaded as well will be deleted after the session ends. Incognito mode is god when you don’t want someone knowing where you’ve gone on the internet.
How to set it up
First make sure you have Google Chrome installed. If you don’t have it yet you can get it from this link here. Next you will need to make a shortcut for Chrome. If you have one already go ahead and skip this step. Go to your Start Menu and search for Chrome. Right click on it and select copy.
Go to the desktop and right click and select Past Shortcut. A new Google Chrome shortcut will appear.
Right click on the new shortcut and select properties.
In the Google Chrome Properties window find the Target field under the Shortcut tab. At the very end of the Target path enter this “-incognito” without the quotes.
Click Ok to all open windows and launch Chrome through the new shortcut you just created. Ever time you open Chrome from that shortcut it will auto start in incognito mode.
… except in Windows 7, where the quotes are removed from the target, so it sends an “-incognito” search query in normal Chrome mode when it opens. Thanks again, Windows 7. Why would any user need to send a switch to an app? :O
It does work (in Windows 7) if you create a new shortcut and add the quotes around the path. For some reason, it only works if you create a new shortcut — editing the default Chrome desktop shortcut doesn’t work because it auto-removes the quotes around the path, so the switch is thrown onto the end of it undistinguished.