- Google constantly adds new features to its popular Chrome browser that make it more attractive to both average users and power users.
- Google’s latest Chrome addition allows users to make the browser open in Guest mode by default.
- You can read the instructions for turning on Chrome’s “Default to Guest mode” feature below.
- Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories.
It seems like every week Google brings a useful and intuitive new feature to one of its many apps and services, and this week is no different. On Wednesday, Craig Tumblison, Chrome Support Manager, revealed a brand new feature that might not serve a purpose for the average user, but could be incredibly helpful for enterprise administrators and power users who want to turn Google’s Chrome browser into a blank slate every time it’s opened.
As of this week, Google has introduced a new feature called Default to Guest mode for Chrome Desktop. As the name suggests, this new feature will allow users to configure Chrome so that it always opens in Guest mode, which provides a stateless browsing experience where the user can’t see or change another Chrome profile’s information and all of the browsing history is deleted as soon as the browsing session ends.
If you’re an enterprise administrator and you want to know more about this feature, you can visit this page to read about managing Chrome policies. If not, here are the instruction for activating the feature:
Windows
- Exit all running instances of Chrome.
- Right click on your “Chrome” shortcut.
- Choose properties.
- At the end of your “Target:” line add the following:
- chrome.exe –guest
- Once complete, use the shortcut to launch Chrome.
macOS
- Quit all running instances of Chrome.
- Run your favorite Terminal application.
- In the terminal, find your Chrome application and append:
- –guest
- For example, a command may look like:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome –guest -
Once complete, launch Chrome.
Linux
- Quit any running instance of Chrome.
- Run your favorite Terminal application.
- In the terminal, find your Chrome application and append:
- –guest
- For example, a command may look like:
google-chrome –guest - Once complete, launch Chrome.
If you aren’t comfortable performing this task, don’t bother attempting it, as you might screw something up. That said, this is surprisingly simple to perform, so if you want to test it out and have an idea of what you’re doing, go for it. The good news is that all you have to do to deactivate “Default to Guest mode” is delete whatever command-line switch you pasted into the Chrome application and open your browser. You should be logged back in.
As we stated at the top, a vast majority of Chrome users will never need or care to use this feature, but the sheer fact that it’s not only possible, but easy to accomplish, speaks to just how dynamic Chrome can be.
