How do I hide the bookmarks bar in Chrome Incognito?
QI followed your answer to Hank Alford’s’s Chrome query in Issue 495’s Problems Solved pages, and created a shortcut on the Windows desktop to launch the browser straight into Incognito mode. This worked as you said it would. However, I can’t make the bookmarks bar disappear. It doesn’t matter if I use the Control (Ctrl)+shift+b keyboard shortcut or try Chrome’s menu to remove the tick from the option — it just won’t hide. I should say that both of these methods work as expected when not in Incognito mode. My bookmarks aren’t private, per se, but I have no need to see them when in Incognito mode because I won’t be visiting any of them. How do I hide them? Andrew Newsome
AGoogle’s official answer would be that you can’t, because that is the way it has designed Chrome’s Incognito mode. Click a bookmark or visit any web page and you will then be able to hide the bookmarks bar — but not before. We have no idea why Incognito mode has been made to work in this daft way, but that’s how it is.
However, we can offer you a workaround. First, make sure all instances of Chrome are closed, including those running in normal mode. Now launch Chrome using the Incognito shortcut you’ve already created. Next, click the Chrome menu button (three vertical dots, top right) and choose Settings. Then, in the ‘On start-up’ section, pick the ‘Open a specific page or set of pages’ option and then, alongside, click the ‘Set pages’ link. In the ‘Add a new page field’, type www.blank.org and click OK, and then OK again to close the box (see screenshot). Now, click the red cross at the top right to close Chrome.
When you next launch Chrome via your Incognito shortcut, it’ll launch and visit the www.blank.org website. This, as you can probably guess, is blank. As Incognito is now displaying a website, it will let you hide the bookmarks bar — so just press Ctrl+shift+b. Finally, close Chrome again and relaunch via your Incognito shortcut and you’ll have the effect of a blank tab and no unwanted bookmarks bar.