Like to open incognito mode with a shortcut? Here’s a simple way to create a Chrome incognito desktop shortcut in Windows 10 and assign a keyboard shortcut.
When you want your browsing session to be private, you can use the Chrome incognito mode. To open it, click on the menu icon and select the “New incognito mode” option from the list. When using the incognito mode, some browsing information will stay private and Chrome will not save it. That information includes but is not limited to browsing history, cookies, site data, form data, and website permissions. Put simply, the incognito mode is very helpful in a lot of situations. Especially when you don’t want the browsing history to be recorded or to avoid cookies.
There are multiple ways to open Chrome incognito mode. One such way is to create an incognito mode shortcut on the desktop. The desktop shortcut is particularly useful if you want to pin Chrome incognito mode to the taskbar or to open it without first launching the regular Chrome browser window.
No matter the reason, if you ever want a Chrome incognito mode desktop shortcut, follow the below steps to create one. Once you have the desktop shortcut, you can even assign a keyboard shortcut to open the incognito mode.
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Create Chrome Incognito Mode Desktop Shortcut
To create incognito mode shortcut you just need to add “–incognito” flag to the chrome.exe file path. Here’s how you can do that.
- Right-click on the empty space on your desktop.
- Select the “New” option.
- Select the “Shortcut” option.
- Click the “Browse” button.
- Go to the “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application” folder.
- Select “chrome.exe“.
- Add “–incognito” at the end of the location path. Make sure there is a space between the file path and argument.
- Click the “Next” button.
- Type a name for the shortcut in the name file.
- Click “Finish“.
With that, you have created the incognito mode desktop shortcut. From now on, you can open the incognito mode by double-clicking on the desktop shortcut.
Important note: if you are using an x86 system (32-bit) then you have to modify the file path to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”.
Pin incognito mode to taskbar
To pin the Chrome incognito mode to the taskbar, drag and drop the incognito mode desktop shortcut onto the taskbar. As soon as you do that, the shortcut will be pinned to the taskbar.
If the default Chrome icon is confusing you, you can change it. To do that, right-click on the desktop shortcut, click “Change Icon” and then choose the icon of your choice. After doing that, pin the shortcut to the taskbar.
Open incognito mode with keyboard shortcut
To open Chrome incognito mode with keyboard shortcut, right-click on the desktop shortcut and select the “Properties” option.
Next, click in the “Shortcut” field and press the key binding you want to assign. In my case, I’m assigning “Ctrl + Shift + /”. After that, click the “Ok” button.
That is it. As long as the incognito mode shortcut is on your desktop, you can open it by pressing the keyboard shortcut.
I hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible. If you like this article, check out how to open Chrome from Command Prompt.
