Update: Part 2 of this post is now up here to allay some of the drawbacks that were pointed out.
There has been so much hype over the “Incognito” (or Private Browsing) mode of Google Chrome / Microsoft IE8, with many internet users screeming Hallelujiah. But I don’t understand what the hoopla is all about. This mode has always been there in Mozilla firefox as well. You just need to devote less than one minute (yes, you read that right, less than one minute) to set it up. Well, actions are better than words, so here it goes:
Step 1.) Run the following command to start the firefox profile manager.(In Linux, press Alt+F2 and in Windows, press Win+R to bring up the run dialogue box)
firefox -ProfileManager
If it says something on the lines of “cannot find command” then use full path to firefox/firefox.exe in linux/Windows respectively.
Step 2.) Press “Create Profile” and enter “Incognito” (or a name of your choice) as your new profile name and press “Finish”.
Step 3.) Select “Incognito” profile and press “Start Firefox”.
Step 4.) Go to Edit->Preferences->Privacy. Select “Always clear my private data when I close Firefox” and unselect “Ask me before clearing private data”.
Step 5.) That’s it. Setup is done. Now, whenever you want to go undercover, run the following command
firefox -P Incognito -no-remote
Note 1: You can run incognito mode and normal mode together simultaneously.
Note 2: Its advised that you put the above command in a shortcut for easy/quick access.
Isn’t that simple? Now, can you roll back that drool factor of being able to go “undercover” in google chrome or Internet Explorer 8?
[...] tells us about Firefox’s Incognito mode and asks us to stop drooling over Google Chrome’s privacy mode labeled Incognito. Does [...]
Yeah.. I knew this long ago. Its just that chrome’s incognito is simpler to execute with a dedicated key. With firefox i’ve to type that command (btw, i didn’t know that -no-remote option, which makes it better) for which i’ve to open cmd.exe, because if I type it directly into the ‘run’ box, that command will remain in history. Thats a lot of keys to go undercover.
Good post, babaji
Very hands on.
[...] Firefox Incognito Mode Is Here: Move Over Chrome/IE8 Sep [...]
@Amit: Actually you don’t have to type the command. Just make a shortcut
and assign it a shortcut key
@Rohit: Thanks Sir jee
@All: Part 2 is up to improve upon this approach.
incognito doesn’t store history/cookies/etc. deleting them with firefox isn’t the same thing and they can easily be undeleted using any undelete utility. we get it, you’re a firefox fanboy, quit trying to compare apples and oranges and admit that chrome has a feature that didn’t make it in time for firefox 3.
@Frank: Please read the “update” at the top of the post that I posted yesterday, and I’m sure you’d have to revise your comment as firefox can be tweaked easily to take care of the points you mentioned. BTW, chrome does store cookies, google itself says that.
And for the record I’m not a fanboy of anything..
Dude!
Good one, but this is not the real ‘Incognito’ mode.
Cookies and temp files are still saved to the disk and then get deleted later.
If anyone wanted, they could retrieve/undelete the files later.
@design: As mentioned to frank, please read the update at the top of the post for part ii, or more specifically, this link:
http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/09/11/firefox-incognito-private-browsing-mode-part-ii.html
I am not surprısıng to anything. But thanks..
Wow! So interesting.
Firefox is so complicated to use (and insecure, compared to Chrome)… Thanks God, Google people have come to the rescue of mere mortal users who just want a simple, secure, nice and better way to navigate on the Web.
You call that setup “simple”? LOL… what, you have to “set it up”?
Have you actually ran Chrome Incognito? Button –> Start New Incognito Window. Done.
Check out the Firefox extension “Stealther” here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1306
It does the same thing as Incognito …I guess
Anjan,
Stealther does the same thing as Incognito, but does NOT work the same way. eg. If I turned on Stealther, Facebook would NOT accept my login, because “cookies are not enabled”…
And Stealther affects ALL of Firefox when it is turned on, not just that particular window.
May Google Chrome come to Linux soon soon soon.
Reading the description, I find that the add-on Distrust – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1559 – does something similar to what Incognito mode does, and it’s much easier than the hack here, and better than the Stealther add-on.
It works by monitoring everything that Firefox does in terms of browsing history, personal information, etc. during a Distrust session, then delete all the items recorded when ending the Distrust session. Only cookies remain, but they are marked to expire upon exiting Firefox.
Yes, it’s true that Firefox writes all the data to disk even when using Distrust. But I’m not too sure about Chrome/IE8 keeping everything inside the RAM. Especially if you surf the really “private” thing you never want to reveal to anyone.
It’s easier than this hack because you don’t need to have two profiles. Having two profiles means I end up having to customize them separately with my favorite add-ons and I miss my normal browsing history and other data. It’s more trouble than it sounds.
It’s better than Stealther because Firefox continues to work as normal even when the add-on is engaged. Distrust does not touch Firefox privacy settings at all, preventing any accidental deletion of the normal non-private history data.
PS: It seems FF 3.1 may have private browsing.
Okay, time to test it. Restarting Firefox…
Thanks ADTC. But there are 2 ways how this differs from distrust or any other extension:
1. If you use distrust etc, then all your normal history will be wiped out as well as they work in a global mode. If you do it in this method, then you preserve ur normal history and keep only those things hidden that you need to while surfing both things simultaneously.
2. If you read the “part 2″ of the post (linked above) then it also tells u how to keep everything in ram for further protection.
No, Distrust does not do anything to existing history (etc.) of Firefox. I already tested Distrust and it works just great. It doesn’t disable history (etc.) of Firefox [unlike Stealther], but simply monitors what Firefox adds to history (etc.) during a Distrust session (not a normal session). Once the session is ended, Distrust simply removes these additions. It never touches anything outside the Distrust session.
Best part is, you can turn on Distrust any time and continue using your browser. Every previous configuration, every previous saved passwords, everything in history (etc.) will still be available to you, and Firefox works without any hiccups, as though the Distrust add-on was never there. Isn’t that much better than having two profiles and having to configure them separately? And it is much similar to Incognito and InPrivate than your hack, where nothing is available.
You said “distrust etc.” but here I’m only talking for Distrust. The etc. part, I’m not sure. I’m not gonna try Stealther, and I haven’t found any other add-ons that give proper private browsing.
About your point 2, yes I noticed that. I wasn’t sure about what I said in my comment. Can you confirm if Google Chrome and IE8 keeps everything in RAM and never writes anything to disk cache during an Incognito or InPrivate session? I think that would slow things down, so instead, it would use a cache, but the cache will be wiped out when you end the session. But I could be wrong.
@ADTC: ohk, thats cool about distrust that it preserves things before it was started.
About the chrome storing things in RAM, I can’t recall the link right now but google say this on one of the help pages that they do keep everything in ram (but they are unclear about whether they give the same treatment to cookies as well because they mention that cookies are “wiped” out when chrome exits)
Just to add, the Distrust add-on doesn’t support having one window as normal and another in Distrust mode. It is global and affects all windows. No, that doesn’t mean already open tabs and windows get wiped from history. It just means that any tab or window you create (or anything you surf) from the point of turning Distrust mode on, it will be “distrusted”.
It is not true incognito if there is -profile- called “INCOGNITO” that is listed when someone looks at the profile manager !!!! I know you can call it whatever you want..but that is still a clue as to “yep, somone is definitely going incognito on this computer”.
It’s a hack until true incongnito mode becomes a feature in some future version of firefox.
The first step just opens a new firefox window.
Besides Chrome is much easier, so if I “want to buy a secret present” I’ll just open chrome instead of a new firefox window.
@Um Yeah: You don’t need to open a “new” window. You can create a shortcut that directly opens your incognito window (and to think of, google chrome added this “direct” incognito “feature” only recently). Anyways, the main point behind this is that ppl who use firefox can have the same advantage without having to open a new browser (much more than opening a new window) and trying to learn new things and also losing out on all their extensions as well.
I love this. Thanks for the instructions. I now have three profiles! General surfing (locked down so I can goof around with minimal concern); Financial (locked down except for the few websites this one is allowed to visit); Research (slightly protected).
I have two things to note on this. First, for those of us who didn’t already know this, in Windows, when you make the shortcut, the switches are placed OUTSIDE of the quotes. Took me a while to figure that out. Second, Adobe Flash still dumps its own cache on you, so if you are using this for ‘porn mode’, you still have to clear that out. Here for the utility: http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
thank you so much for this tutorial!
i have it set up and working, just one annoyance really, and i know it has been mentioned in the comments but as i am not familiar with this process, i was wondering if you could perhaps literally spell it out for me?
the code used to run Firefox in it’s incognito mode can be placed in a shortcut,
how exactly is this achieved?
(i am running windows xp – in case the changes things)
Great, now I just have to figure out how to do this in OSX.
my problem is:
with chrome incognito mode when i close it everything goes back to normal but with firefox when i close, next tym i open it it goes bak 2 the incognito mode i use. also i cannot create the shortcut key. it says “the firefox cannot be found”
@me:1. Looks like your incognito profile is set by default that’s why this is happening. check by running the profile manager. Also for shortcut, either you need to have firefox in your path, or give the complete path of firefox in the shortcut.
nywyz..chrome is nt tat gr8..compared to firefox and its addons..its yet to hav updates..to say the least..chrome doesnt hav a shortcut to clear browsing history..!!
The fact of the matter is, I can right click on a link in Chrome and say “open this link in incognito mode”, and then I have my incognito mode. This is vastly different from having to go through all this stuff, and then having to click on a different shortcut when I want incognito mode. “But you can code/DL an add-on to have that menu option for you!” Yes, true, but I don’t want to! It’s all available already.
Also whenever I install / re-install firefox I’d have to go through this again.
@moocow: Thanks for your comment. Yes, you are correct. However at the time this article was written, what you mention wasn’t possible. Moreover, the headline of the article might seem a bit intimidating but this article is mainly geared towards people who want to use firefox instead of chrome because of their numerous other aspects that wouldn’t want to lose out on but would still like a functionality similar-to-incognito there as well.
@Shantanu: Ah, all right. When taking the article from the perspective you mentioned, it makes more sense =). Thanks,
- moocow
[...] It’s not to go unmentioned however that Chrome does have some traits that really do shine despite its otherwise lack of depth. The very clean and sleek interface is easy on the eyes and optimizes viewing space for sites very well. It also carries a handy task manager feature that can really come in handy when a runaway web application causes the current tab to crash. This feature can, most of the time, prevent the need to entirely close out of the browser to recover. Lastly while the incognito feature is very enjoyable it isn’t much other than a one-click profile switch that comes standard in IE8 and can be set up with a few easy steps in Firefox. [...]
Thanks for posting this guide!
Since passing arguments to programs via the Mac OS X GUI is more complicated than just making a shortcut, I’ve written two launcher applications for OSX and updated the setup instructions. It’s pretty simple unless Firefox is not in the Applications folder, but I have included instructions on what to do in that case.
You can download the launchers here:
http://eliot.bambi.net/hacks/osx/FFIncognito_v1-0.dmg
Incognito browsing mode for Firefox on Mac OS X…
Regarding the recent re-purposing of this blog: I guess that if I have tech-related stuff, this is still the best place to post it!
Windows users currently have a nice browsing feature in Google Chrome and IE8 called incognito mode, which means that an…
Yeah Good One Guys !
Now add that incognito as a plugin button to Firefox !
For who knows everything – Firefox is the Best
For who knows something – Google Chrome is the best!!
For who knows nothing – Internet Explorer is the best !!
Firefox Rocks !
I am a fan of Google, still when it comes to functionality and simplicity Firefox is the best. Ofcourse Chrome is a simple browser.
Prabhakar.R
you guys actin like you wanna make watchin porn private LOL
Wait, isn’t there like… this new feature in firefox 3.5 that’s “private browsing” under the Tools tab? Ctrl+shift+P
Yea, this article is outdated. Written in Sep 2008, that’s like a year ago. Well, everything gets outdated in the blink of an eye these days. The latest Firefox has built-in private browsing, so you don’t need add-ins or messing with profile managers.
for those of use new to linux you should advise that you need to cd to /usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3 before you run ./firefox -profilemanager
Thank you, this realm firefoxsu single cross
The information you gave thanks for the post really worked this wonder of your site to another multi-language support yet?
Hi,
Where is syntax of permanent incognito mode on Firefox browser ?
“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” –incognito is it correct ?
Something like the link: http://goo.gl/O03a for Google chrome
Please let me know
Aabhas
Or just press “ctrl+shift+p” in firefox 4
Thanks a lot…This works perfectly…:-)
Doesn’t work in Firefox 5. “Firefox -ProfileManager” just launches firefox. Don’t see any incognito mode anywhere.