Do you know you’re supposed to monitor and delete your incognito browsing history? Yes! Most people use the incognito browsing mode when they want to keep their browsing history private, but it’s not.
When using incognito mode in your web browser, you may think that your activities are completely anonymous and untraceable. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and other third-party entities may still be able to track your online activity, even during private browsing.
Also, if you share your device with others, they can find out what you visited in incognito mode.
Understanding incognito mode
Incognito mode, also known as private browsing or in-private mode, prevents your device from saving your browsing history. Incognito mode also doesn’t save temporary data — such as cookies or website login info. This helps keep your activity hidden from anyone who uses your device later.
To view your incognito browsing history, you can use tools like the DNS cache or third-party software to recover your private browsing data. While there’s no straightforward way to see the sites you visited incognito — like viewing your history in your browser — the DNS cache is a good place to start.
Here’s how to check your incognito history:
View incognito history via DNS cache
If you’re using a Windows device, you can see your incognito history in your DNS cache, even after your browsing session ends.
The Domain Name System (DNS) matches a website’s URL, or web address, with its IP address. When you type a URL into your web browser, a DNS server finds the IP address of that website so you can visit it.
This information is recorded in the DNS cache — even when you’re surfing incognito. The DNS cache helps speed up your browsing by ensuring your browser doesn’t have to check the DNS server every time you revisit a site.
If you need to recover or clear your incognito history — or delete your browsing history entirely — you can do it via the DNS cache on a Windows device.
Here’s how to check your browsing history via the DNS cache:
- Type cmd in the Start menu search bar to open Command Prompt. Then click Run as administrator.
- Enter the commandipconfig/displaydns and hit Enter. You’ll see your detailed DNS cache history.
Checking incognito history via DNS cache works only on Windows devices. Other operating systems like macOS or mobile devices may not offer such an easy way to see incognito history in the DNS cache.
View incognito history on Mac
It might be counterintuitive, but when you open a new incognito tab, history from that tab is still being recorded somewhere. It’s useful to know how to do an incognito history check. Here’s how to check your incognito history on Mac:
- Open Go > Applications and click Utilities.
- Double-click Console.
- Select your device and enter any:mdnsresponder in search.
- Click the Start button in the toolbar.
- In Utilities, click Terminal.
- Enter the following command: sudo killall -INFO mDNSResponder and press enter. Give your password when prompted.
- Go back to Console. Your incognito history is shown.
View incognito history with Chrome extensions
Your web explorer generates and stores all sorts of data, data which might be good to erase every so often. Here’s how to find incognito history with the help of an extension in Google Chrome:
- Open Off The Record History, then click Add to Chrome.
- Confirm the installation by clicking Add extension in the pop-up.
- Now you have to activate the extension. Enter chrome://extensions/in the URL bar, and click Details under the Off The Record History extension.
- Scroll down to Allow in Incognito and toggle it on. You’ll now record history even in incognito mode.
This extension deletes incognito history automatically after seven days. You can also delete incognito history in Chrome manually by going to the settings for the extension.
How to see incognito history on an Android device
You can’t view your DNS cache, but you can use third-party apps to see incognito history on Android devices. Many popular parental control apps, such as Hoverwatch, Famisafe, and KidsGuard Pro track incognito browsing.
While you can see the incognito history using these apps, you can’t delete it. And you can’t check the history retrospectively. You can use the app to track future incognito sessions only.
Moreover, parental control apps often track more information than you may like, so use them at your own risk.
How to see incognito history on an iPhone
If your smartphone runs iOS 11 or later, the only way to see your incognito history is to use third-party apps to track it in advance. Like with Android, popular parental control apps, such as ClevGuard, Hoverwatch, and FoneWatcher enable such tracking, but be careful and use them at your own risk.
If your iPhone or iPad has an older version of iOS, open Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website data to see your private browsing history.
How is your browsing history saved in incognito mode?
When you browse the internet in incognito mode, the browser doesn’t save your web queries and the websites you visit. Your browsing history, cookies, or other site data are not saved during private browsing. However, just using the incognito mode doesn’t guarantee private browsing. Your browser is not the only place where your data is stored.
Your ISP collects and stores data about your online activities, including which websites you visit—yes, when private browsing too.
Furthermore, some websites may track the IP address of the device used to access their site. Even if your history is not saved to your browser, it can still be stored by other services and websites.
Other than that, if you use private browsing, your device records your browsing session in its Domain Name System (DNS) cache. Here’s how:
- Each time you visit a new website, you type its domain name into your browser.
- A request for the IP address of that domain is sent by your browser in the background to the DNS server.
- Then, it stores this web address locally on your device, so you may access it more quickly the next time you wish to visit the same site. This temporary DNS record is known as the DNS cache.
- The DNS cache includes the record of domain names you recently visited, along with their IP addresses. This includes domains both visited in normal mode and incognito mode.
- Since this DNS cache is stored in the device, anyone using your computer can see the websites you visited using a few command line commands.
Clearly, incognito mode is just not as secure and private as it sounds. To ensure your privacy, it’s important to delete your DNS cache and any other traces of your browsing session.
How to delete the incognito history
To clear incognito history from your device, you need to delete your DNS cache. This process is called flushing, and the steps are as follows:
How to delete incognito history on a Windows device
- Find “Command prompt” using the Windows search box and choose the “Run as administrator” option.
- Type “ipconfig/flushdns” in the Command prompt window and press “Enter.”
How to delete incognito history on a Mac
- Open the “Applications” and choose “Utilities.”
- Double-click to open “Terminal.”
- Type the “sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder” command into the terminal and press “Enter.” You’ll also need to enter your password.
How to delete incognito history on an Android device
- Open Google Chrome and type “chrome://net-internals/#dns” in the website address bar.
- Click on “Clear host cache” to delete DNS queries.
How to delete incognito history on an iPhone
If you have an iPhone and use the Google Chrome browser, follow the same steps for Android phones above.
Another option is to restart your iPhone or enable Airplane mode for a few seconds. It will automatically flush all the DNS records.
How to hide incognito browsing history
The instructions above describe how to delete the traces of incognito browsing from your device. But your incognito history can still be tracked by external parties.
- Your ISP, the government, an employee, or the institution in charge of your network (e.g., your university) could be monitoring the DNS requests your browsers send to DNS servers for a variety of reasons:
- Governments use internet surveillance to enforce censorship and ensure compliance with laws. Authorities also impose ISP tracking for data retention purposes.
- ISPs also track your internet activity to profit from selling your browsing history to advertisers or throttle your internet bandwidth.
- Employees or schools may try to prevent you from visiting social media platforms or inappropriate sites when you’re supposed to be working or studying.
- Websites track your incognito sessions on their site if you log in or come back with the same IP address. The best example is Google – are you aware of how much Google knows about you? It goes far beyond incognito search history.
So, to hide your browsing history, using incognito mode and deleting your incognito history from the DNS cache is not enough because third parties can still track what you do online. But you can use a virtual private network (VPN) too.
A VPN is a service that encrypts your traffic, so third parties can’t track which websites you visit. Your ISP can only see you connect to the VPN server but not what you do online afterward. And since a VPN also hides your IP address, websites can’t recognize you if you return with a different IP address each time.
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