[Update: Now Rolling Out] Chrome 76 Will Come with an Improved Incognito Mode

The next version of Chrome will come with a feature that comes handy to people who read lots of news and use the incognito mode to bypass paywalled articles. The beta version of Chrome 76 is already out.

Most news sites are now subscription based and offer a paywall for readers. However, they offer a few free articles before you get hit by the paywall. To bypass this restriction, people opt for incognito mode but these sites such as the New York Times are testing blocking browsers including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox for users that use incognito mode to sneak around.

The New York Times writes that tech companies don't care about your privacy. Meanwhile they have started blocking Chrome's Incognito mode pic.twitter.com/9YYYfFghI5

— Kevin Lacker (@lacker) June 10, 2019

Welp, The New York Times AND The Washington Post have figured out a way to block me from reading their articles in incognito mode… This seems unfair.

— Caleb Bobo (@CalebABobo) June 12, 2019

When you go incognito, a sites ability to read or write cookies is blocked and thus news sites can’t know if you’re one of its paying readers or not thus you get to read limitless articles or if you pass the stipulated number of free articles.

The New York Times fixed this loophole by adding a few lines of javascript that tricks the browser to check if the FileSytem API is disabled(it always is when in incognito) Other sites do this too hence the “You’re in private mode” alert you get.

Chrome 76 has fixed this. You will no longer see this alert.

Chrome Incognito mode has been detectable for years, due to the FileSystem API implementation. As of Chrome 76, this is fixed.
Apologies to the "detect private mode" scripts out there. 💐 pic.twitter.com/3LWFXQyy7w

— Paul Irish (@paul_irish) June 11, 2019

Other features

• Chrome 76 will also come with Flash disabled by default as it switches to HTML5. It is already live.
• Another feature is that you’ll be notified if a site is a Progressive Web App(PWA) by showing you an install button for you to download.
• Chrome will also allow websites to serve a dark version of their websites based on a user’s preference. The dark mode has been improved with the inclusion of prefers-colors-scheme media query. This allows websites to enable dark mode automatically to match the user’s preferred mode.
• Another new feature is Frosted glass that makes UI elements translucent. This lets designers construct “frosted glass” dialog boxes, translucent navigation headers and video overlays
• Chrome 76 is also testing a new Paint Holding behaviour for seamless web navigation.

When’s it coming out?

Chrome 76 stable version is expected to roll out by the end of next month.

Update: Chrome 76 is now available for Android, Mac, Windows and Linux users