Have you noticed your clipboard history behaving differently when copying text from Chrome’s Incognito mode on Windows 10 or 11? This change, implemented in Q3 2024, isn’t a glitch. It’s a deliberate feature designed to enhance privacy during private browsing. It’s important to understand how Microsoft’s intervention has reshaped Incognito’s behavior.
Chromium-based browsers, by default, save copied text and images to the clipboard. On Windows, this content syncs with the Cloud Clipboard, accessible via the Windows Key + V shortcut. However, this practice poses a privacy risk in Incognito mode, where the primary goal is to prevent data tracking. The ability to prevent data from incognito mode from being saved to the clipboard is something that required intervention.
Using Windows Clipboard Formats
The most effective solution involves leveraging Windows clipboard formats to actively block history and cloud synchronization. Here are the specifics:
Step 1: The browser utilizes the ExcludeClipboardContentFromMonitorProcessing format.
This format is designed to prevent the copied data from being saved to the clipboard history and synchronized with the cloud.
Step 2: The browser sets the CanIncludeInClipboardHistory flag to 0.
This setting explicitly tells Windows not to include the copied content in the clipboard history.
Step 3: The browser sets the CanUploadToCloudClipboard flag to 0.
This setting prevents the copied content from being synchronized to the cloud clipboard.
Media Content Privacy
Another significant update concerns how Windows handles media previews for content played within Chromium-based browsers.
When you play a video in a regular Chrome/Edge tab and adjust the volume, Windows 10/11 displays a media preview with information like the title, artist, and artwork, including on the lock screen.
However, since an update released in 2024, Chrome now conceals media content when you watch anything in an Incognito window. Now when media is played in Incognito mode, Windows displays generic media information, such as “A site is playing media”.
These combined changes represent a significant step forward in making Chromium’s Incognito mode genuinely more private.