How to disable Incognito mode in Chrome?

Question

For Mac OS X, how do you disable Incognito mode in Chrome? The desired result simply being that the user cannot browse in Incognito mode, even if they know the keyboard shortcut or something similar.

Answer 1

The short answer: you must edit the preferences file so that the key IncognitoModeAvailability has a value of 1.

Original Instructions

In /Library/Preferences/ add a plist entry to the file com.google.Chrome.plist such that the key is IncognitoModeAvailability and the value is 1.

Here is an example: assuming the file com.google.Chrome.plist doesn't exist, use a text editor to save the following code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>IncognitoModeAvailability</key>
   <integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

The full file name and path of the above should be /Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist.

Updated Instructions

Since macOS Sierra, proper plist files seem to be in some binary format by default—a format that you can't edit with a normal text editor. I found that I can open them in Apple's Xcode and it has a nice GUI—very easy to edit. If you don't have access to Xcode, I think you can use the plutil terminal command like this:

plutil -convert xml1 YOUR_FILE_NAME_HERE

In xml format, you should be able to edit it in a text editor, and a web site I read says that the xml format should work fine.

Regardless, I recently was able to disable Incognito mode using Xcode on the ~/Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist file. (Furthermore, I had to delete /Library/Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist because my old version was deemed "corrupted" because it wasn't in a proper file format.)

Answer 2

Rather than converting the plist and manually editing it, you can set the option in one step. In the Terminal, run:

defaults write com.google.chrome IncognitoModeAvailability -integer 1

Then reboot or run:

killall cfprefsd

to reload the plist cache. It is not enough to quit and relaunch Chrome, or even to logout and login again.

IncognitoModeAvailability can be set to 0, 1, or 2:

• 0 means Incognito is enabled
• 1 means Incognito is disabled
• 2 means Incognito is forced

Answer 3

Here's an updated way for macOS Sierra.

1. Install a plist editing program like PrefSetter.
2. Using Finder, go to the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder.
3. Copy and paste an existing plist file, (I used com.google.Keystone.agent.plist).
4. Now open that copied file using PrefSetter, and rename it com.google.Chrome.
5. Delete all existing keys, and create a new key, giving it the name: IncognitoModeAvailability.
6. Under class, choose Integer, and under value, enter 1.
7. Now save this file, and copy and paste it into the /Library/Preferences folder as well. (Remember this isn't the same folder as ~/Library/Preferences folder)
8. Restart your computer, and viola, it should work!

Answer 4

I've seen a bunch of very complicated directions/suggestions for how to disable Incognito in Google Chrome for Mac OS X, but I've found a much simpler method.

Simply open up Chrome, click on "Chrome" in the upper-left hand corner; click on "Preferences"; click on "Settings"; scroll to the very bottom and click on "Show Advanced Settings"; scroll to the very bottom and click on "Reset Settings." Voila! But, now your settings are at their original settings, so you'll now have to go and reset those settings that you want to change from their original state.