TL;DR
- Google Chrome for Android now has a nifty way to lock Incognito tabs behind a fingerprint.
- The feature hasn’t been widely rolled out, but you can still enable it now if you want.
Chrome for Android is getting a handy privacy feature that will make browsing in Incognito mode even more discreet. The browser now has a setting that allows you to lock and unlock your private browsing tabs behind your fingerprint.
The feature is akin to biometric lock support introduced by Google on the Drive app for iOS in 2020. The feature is part of the app’s privacy screen settings and allows users to lock and unlock access to Google Drive on iPhones using Face ID or Touch ID.
On Android, Chrome now instantly locks Incognito tabs once you exit the app. When you relaunch the browser and try to access these tabs again, you will see a gray screen with an “Unlock Incognito” option at the bottom of the screen. Opening tabs again would require fingerprint authentication. Not using fingerprint sensors? You can also hide tabs behind a PIN code. Although the former might be a better option because other people might know your phone’s PIN.
Of course, all this does not happen automatically. You’ll need to enable the feature from the app’s privacy and security settings, where you’ll find a new option called “Lock incognito tabs when you quit Chrome.”
This is indeed a nice feature to have, especially when you need to lend your phone to someone and you don’t want them to accidentally open your private tabs.
9to5Google reports that the feature has yet to be widely rolled out. However, you can enable it right now with the following Chrome flag on recent versions of Android:
chrome://flags/#incognito-reauthentication-for-android
A stable release of the feature should also follow soon.