Guide

What incognito mode doesn't hide

Incognito does one job well: it keeps Chrome from writing anything down on this computer. Everything beyond that — your internet provider, the wifi owner, your workplace — is outside its reach. Here is the honest list, both sides of it.

Updated August 19, 2026 · Applies to Chrome on Windows, Mac, and Linux

What incognito mode does

Everything on this list happens on your own computer, and only there:

• No history entries. Pages you visit in an incognito window are never written to chrome://history.
• Cookies and site data are temporary. They exist only for the session and are deleted when you close the last incognito window.
• Sign-ins are forgotten. Any account you logged into during the session is signed out again when the last incognito window closes.
• No address bar traces. Incognito visits never feed the address bar's suggestions, so nothing from them resurfaces as you type later.

What it doesn't hide

Incognito changes what Chrome records on this machine — nothing else. It does not hide your browsing from:

• Your internet provider. The ISP carries every connection you make and can keep records of them, incognito or not.
• The wifi or router owner. A home router, a hotel network, a friend's wifi — whoever runs the network can log which sites the connection reached.
• An employer or school. Network monitoring sees your connections, and management software installed on a work or school device can see far more than that.
• DNS resolver logs. Every site name your computer looks up can be recorded by whichever DNS service answers it.
• The websites themselves. A site like late-night-video.example still sees your IP address — and knows exactly who you are if you sign into an account.
• Downloaded files and bookmarks. Both survive the window. The file stays in your Downloads folder; the bookmark stays in Chrome.
• Anything from before you opened the window. Visits made in a normal window are already in your history and stay there until you delete them — the forgot-incognito clean-up guide covers exactly that.

Using incognito properly

For the local, on-this-computer protection it does offer, the routine is:

1. Open an incognito window: press Ctrl+Shift+N (Windows and Linux) or ⌘+Shift+N (Mac), or click the ⋮ (More) button in Chrome's top-right corner and choose New Incognito window.
2. Confirm you're actually in it: the window is dark, the hat-and-glasses icon sits next to the address bar, and the new-tab page says You've gone Incognito.
3. Keep everything you don't want recorded inside that window. A link opened in a normal window — from email, a messaging app, another tab — is saved to history as usual.
4. When you're done, close every incognito window. Cookies and sign-ins from the session are only deleted once the last one is closed.

The two gaps people actually get caught by

In practice, the trouble with incognito is rarely what it covers — it's when it isn't running:

• Forgetting to open it. One visit in a normal window is enough, and it's easy to do: links from other apps open in a normal window by default, and habit takes over when you're tired or in a hurry.
• The before-and-after problem. Incognito is not retroactive. Nothing you visited before opening the window is protected — those pages are already in chrome://history — and the moment you're back in a normal window, Chrome records again. If that has already happened, the step-by-step clean-up removes what was saved.

Why incognito alone is hard to live with

• It hides, it doesn't block. Incognito keeps a page out of the history. It does nothing to stop the page opening in the first place.
• It's all-or-nothing. No cookies means no saved sign-ins anywhere — you re-enter passwords constantly, and sites forget your settings every session.
• It depends on remembering. Every single time. The protection is only as reliable as the habit.