When surfing the internet, you always leave a trail in your browser in the form of search history, visited pages, or saved cookies. To clear this trail, Firefox offers a “private browsing” feature, which means that data is no longer saved when surfing and can’t be seen by other users when sharing a computer. But beware: although lots of data will be concealed, not everything is hidden when you activate private browsing in Firefox. We’ll show you how to activate private or incognito mode in Firefox, and reveal which data is actually hidden (and which isn’t).
To prevent creating a record or saving cookies temporarily, you can enable the “private mode” setting in Firefox. To do so, click on “New Private Window” in the top right corner of the menu.
A new window will now open in private mode. You can tell that you’re using this mode based on the purple icon with the mask in the top right of the tab window.
To leave private mode, simply close down the window.
If you already have a window or multiple tabs open in Firefox, these will remain in public mode, and continue to save cookies and other data as before.
As an alternative to the method above, you can also press the shortcut [Shift] + [Ctrl] + [P], or [Shift] + [command] + [P] on a Mac to activate incognito mode in Firefox.
If you want to open a specific link in incognito mode while browsing publicly, just launch the context menu for the link by right-clicking or holding the [Ctrl] key and clicking, and then select “Open Link in New Private Window.”
If you don’t want to have to think about whether you’re using private mode in Firefox or not, you can also disable saving browser history permanently. To do this, open the browser menu and select “Preferences” from the top right. Then, choose the option “Privacy & Security” in the left menu that appears. Scroll down the page to “History” and select the option “Never remember history” for the Firefox history setting. It’s also a good idea to delete the existing Firefox browser history.
Once you’ve configured the browser this way, Firefox will not display a purple icon with the mask in the top bar, but the browser will function as if in incognito mode.
If you want to allow your browser history to be recorded again, you can return to the “Privacy & Security” settings and select the other option from the drop-down menu.
Some people think that Firefox “private mode” allows them to surf the internet invisibly. But that’s not the case. In fact, the following data is no longer saved in private mode:
Remember that passwords and bookmarks that you create when using Firefox incognito are saved permanently. What’s more, you will still get URL suggestions when typing into the address bar in private mode. These are based on your search behavior when using normal mode. Your provider can also continue to identify you and your surfing behavior – for instance, by using your IP address and device. If you also wish to remove this trail and surf (more) anonymously, you’ll need to use a VPN client.
Browsing the internet without leaving a trace – that’s the promise of incognito mode. In Safari, it goes by the name of “private browsing” and ensures that your browser history, cookies, and cache data aren’t saved locally. We’ll show you how to activate and deactivate private mode in Safari on various devices.
If you want to surf the Internet in private, your best option is to use the Chrome incognito mode. Incognito mode is a security feature that lets you browse the Internet without your history, cookies or other browsing data being stored. Read on to find out how to go incognito in Chrome and why you might want to do this.
Want to restore your session in Firefox? If you accidentally close Firefox all the tabs you had open will disappear from the tab bar when you reopen the browser. Fortunately, the web browser has a built-in feature for restoring your previous Firefox session or individual tabs. How does this feature work and what settings are required to restore tabs in Firefox?
All well-known browsers come with incognito mode which lets you “surf privately” on the web. Find out what private mode means in practice and how to activate it in in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. But beware that incognito mode on its own does not guarantee anonymity online.
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