Firefox Incognito Mode Is Here: Move Over Chrome/IE8
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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)
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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
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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?
© Shantanu Goel | Firefox Incognito Mode Is Here: Move Over Chrome/IE8----
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This post has 24 comments
September 12th, 2008
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.
September 12th, 2008
Good post, babaji
Very hands on.
September 12th, 2008
@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.
September 13th, 2008
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.
September 13th, 2008
@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..
September 14th, 2008
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.
September 14th, 2008
@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
September 15th, 2008
I am not surprısıng to anything. But thanks..
September 19th, 2008
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.
September 21st, 2008
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.
September 22nd, 2008
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
September 22nd, 2008
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.
October 6th, 2008
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...
October 6th, 2008
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.
October 6th, 2008
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.
October 6th, 2008
@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)
October 6th, 2008
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".
October 20th, 2008
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.
November 3rd, 2008
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.
November 3rd, 2008
@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.
November 12th, 2008
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
January 4th, 2009
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)
January 5th, 2009
lol is just funny how this Shantanu Goel is trying so desperately to prove that firefox is better than chrome. Just admit it kid, ctrl + shift + N beats having to actually look this article up, read it, doing ur "1 min" (lol) proccess and then making shortcuts for it. And even then, Chrome's incognito is still better. Just accept the fact that chrome incognito is BETTER than any Firefox add-on or profile setup you can come up with.
January 5th, 2009
@lol: Thanks for your viewpoint. Please do let me know where exactly in the article I "compared" firefox and chrome.
Anyways, IMO atleast, doing a "1 min" process is any day better than installing multiple browsers just to use one particular feature(which would also require you to look up the download site for new browser, download it, install it, configure it according to your tastes and then still go back to your old browser for the features you miss. And yeah, this all would be much more than 1 minute surely).
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