Incognito mode Android: how to use it in Chrome, Firefox and Samsung Internet

How to go incognito in Chrome

Tap the three-dot menu, then New Incognito tab. The Chrome incognito Android ships with is the same feature as the desktop one, minus the extensions. To leave, open the tab switcher, swipe to the normal tab set, and close the incognito tabs — or use Close all Incognito tabs from the notification Chrome leaves in the shade while any are open.

Chrome on Android can require your fingerprint or screen lock before it will reveal incognito tabs again. It is under Settings → Privacy and security → Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Chrome, and it is worth turning on for the same reason Apple made it the default: incognito tabs survive until you close them.

Samsung Internet, where it is called Secret mode

Tabs button, then Turn on Secret mode. Samsung goes further than the others and can put the mode behind a password or biometrics, which it will offer to set the first time. Leaving it is Turn off Secret mode in the same menu.

Firefox, behind the mask icon

The tab switcher has a mask icon for private tabs; tap it, then the plus. Firefox can also close private tabs automatically when you leave the app, under Settings → Delete browsing data on quit, which removes the "did I leave that open" problem entirely.

Worth noting before the caveats: none of the three browsers here treats the mode as a setting you leave switched on. It is a separate tab set in each of them, which is why there is no single switch to find and why the honest instruction is always about moving between tab sets rather than about turning something off.

What incognito mode Android is actually worth

How to go incognito on phones is the easy half of the question; what it is worth is the other. Two Android-specific caveats belong here, because incognito mode Android is easy to over-trust. Apps outside the browser are unaffected: a link opened from a messaging app may land in a custom tab that is not private at all. And a work profile or device managed by an employer can log activity above the browser, where no browser setting reaches.

There is also no separate private browser Android installs for you and no dedicated app to find: every one of the three browsers above has the mode built in, and a private browser Android users download from the store buys very little the built-in mode does not already give them. Beyond that, the limits are the general ones described under incognito mode. If the goal is to free up space rather than to leave no trace, the thing you actually want is clearing the cache, which is a different operation.

What Android itself adds around the browser

Two things happen outside the browser that people reasonably expect a private tab to cover, and it does not. The first is the recent-apps screen. Android renders a live thumbnail of whatever the browser is showing, so a private tab appears there like any other page until the app is closed. Chrome and Samsung Internet both hide those previews once their lock is enabled, which is a second reason to turn it on.

The second is name resolution. Private tabs change what the browser stores, not which server answers a lookup, so every domain you open is still resolved by whatever DNS the phone or the network provides. Android’s Private DNS setting, under Network & internet, encrypts those lookups so the network cannot read them. That is a different protection from a private tab, and the two are often confused: one hides the page from the device, the other hides the lookup from the network. Google’s own description of Incognito is explicit about which of the two it is.

Downloads behave the same way in every browser here: the file stays on the phone. Only the entry in the download list is dropped, which surprises people often enough to be worth repeating.

The browser inside other apps

Most links on an Android phone are not opened in a browser window at all. A messaging app, a mail client or a feed hands the URL to a Custom Tab: a view rendered by your browser but hosted inside the other app, with that app's own bar across the top. It uses your normal browsing profile, cookies included, which is exactly what makes it convenient and exactly why it is not private in the sense people assume when the surrounding app has just opened it for them.

There is no private Custom Tab. If a link needs to open in a private tab, it has to be moved there deliberately: the Custom Tab's overflow menu carries an Open in browser entry, and from there a long-press on a link offers Open in Incognito tab. The alternative is to copy the address and paste it into a private tab that is already open.

A Custom Tab is also not a lesser browser. It runs the same engine, honours the same site permissions and the same content settings, and its history is your history. The only thing it changes is the frame around the page and who put it in front of you, which is worth knowing when a page behaves differently from how it behaves in the app you expected to be using.

One more Android-specific detail: the browser's own download list and the phone's are not the same thing. A file fetched in a private tab is registered by Android's download manager and appears in Files like any other, whatever the browser chooses to forget. If the point of the session was that nothing is left on the device, the download is the part that has to be removed by hand.

The setting worth turning on

Private tabs on a phone persist until you close them, which means the protection is only as good as the phone's lock screen. Every one of the three browsers can close that gap, and it is the single change worth making on this page.

Chrome's Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Chrome requires your fingerprint or screen lock before it will show them again. Samsung Internet can put Secret mode behind a separate password. Firefox can be told to delete private tabs, or everything, when you quit, which removes the question entirely.

Apple made the equivalent behaviour the default on iPhone, for the same reason: a private tab that survives until someone else picks up the phone is not doing the job people assume it is. The iPhone side works differently enough to be worth reading separately.