Chrome’s Incognito Mode is a great way to keep your browsing private. But if you want to enable extensions in Incognito Mode, you’ll need to do some extra work. First, open Chrome and click on the three lines in the top left corner of the window. This will open a menu with three options: “Settings”, “Extensions”, and “Incognito Mode”. The first option is where you’ll need to set up your extension preferences. In this setting, you’ll need to choose which extensions you want to allow access to Incognito Mode. You can either choose all extensions or just a few select ones. The second option is where you’ll need to set up your privacy settings for each extension. This setting will tell the extension how much data it needs to store about your browsing history and activity in order for it to be able to access Incognito Mode data. You can either choose not to store any data at all or choose a specific amount of data that the extension needs in order for it to be able to access Incognito Mode data. The last setting is where you’ll need to set up how long Incognito Mode will stay active for after you close Chrome. You can either choose a specific time period or leave it as always on when Chrome starts up.
Chrome’s Incognito mode prevents websites from tracking you when you’re online. Because Chrome can’t guarantee that extensions aren’t tracking you, they are disabled in Incognito mode by default.
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However, there may be some extensions you need to use while browsing in Incognito mode, such as LastPass or 1Password for logging in to websites, the OneNote Web Clipper for saving web pages to read later or offline, or others. You can allow individual extensions like these to run in Incognito mode, and we’ll show you how using 1Password as an example.
To get started, open Chrome and type chrome://extensions in the address bar to go to the Extensions page.
For each extension you want available in Incognito mode, check the “Allow in incognito” check box under the extension’s name. A warning displays about Chrome not being able to prevent extensions from tracking you. We don’t recommend enabling every extension. Chrome disables them for a reason, but if there are some extensions you trust and would help make your browsing experience in Incognito mode easier, you can turn those on.
Now, you can open a new Incognito window from the Chrome menu…
…and you’ll find the extension you allowed is available on the toolbar.
If you’re concerned about your privacy when using Chrome, read our article about optimizing Google Chrome for maximum privacy.
