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Recently, when we covered 5 tab extensions to fancify chrome some readers mailed me, asking how to open blank tabs for privacy concerns? That is, they wanted to remove or hide most visited or recently closed websites from chrome’s new tab page.
Normally, when we open new tab in Google chrome, home page speed dial similar to opera displays most visited sites. Under normal circumstances, this is pretty useful as it provides facility to go to our favorite site with a single click. But sometimes, this is not at all favourable, especially when you want to hide your activities. At office or in home there are some situations when you don’t want to publicly display your recent visits for privacy reasons.
Possible solutions for this problem include – using incognito mode or removing website thumbnail from list. But this isn’t permanent solution for this recurring problem. Let’s discuss 2 potential solutions for this:
Temporary Hide Frequently Top Visited Web Pages
This one is simple, infact inbuilt in Chrome so you don’t have to download anything. All you need to do is click on Change Page Layout button and uncheck most visited and recently closed sites. Check out below image for instructions.
Permanently hide Thumbnails from New Tab
You can remove site thumbnails/images from chrome new page by clearing all your history. For this go to Options > Under the hood > Clear browsing data. Now to permanently stop these thumbnails from coming back, install Blank New Tab Extension. This extension forces chrome to open about:blank in new tab i.e. blank page.
Now you can easily hide all those commonly visiting sites by above two methods. Here is a short video for the same:
Google Chrome has recently become the Web browser of choice for many Mac and PC users. It’s fast, extensible, and relatively secure. But it has a notable flaw: unlike most browsers, Chrome has no user setting to prevent or automatically clear the browser history. Users can always manually clear the history, but doing so takes four clicks through three menus; hardly ideal. Luckily, there’s a trick we can use to prevent browsing history from being recorded in Chrome.
Here’s how you can get this done. Chrome stores the browser history in a file on your computer’s drive. If we limit Chrome’s ability to modify that file, it won’t be able to record any web addresses.
To start, first, go into Chrome and manually clear your history by pressing Command-Y for OS X or Control-H for Windows. Then click Clear Browsing Data, making sure the box “Clear Browsing History” is checked, and then select “from the beginning of time” from the drop-down menu.
Then click the Clear Browsing Data button at the bottom of the window to complete the process. This gives us a blank slate from which to start.
Now we have to restrict access to Chrome’s history file. First, quit Chrome to prevent any conflicts, and then find Chrome’s history file.
In macOS, the history file is stored at the following location:
On a Windows machine, this is where you want to go to find Chrome’s history file: C:Users[User Name]AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUser DataDefault Note that you may need to enable Windows Explorer’s “show hidden files” option in order to see the AppData folder.
In either of these locations, you’ll find a file called “History” with no file extension. This is the file we need to lock. In macOS, right click on the file and choose Get Info (or highlight the file and press Command-I).
Under “General,” check the box for Locked. This will prevent Chrome from modifying this file and thus stop any future browsing history from being recorded.
For Windows, right click on the History file and choose Properties. In the Properties window, check the box for Read-Only and then press Apply.
Once you’ve locked the History file, open Chrome and start browsing. Then head to your history list and you’ll see that Chrome reports “No history entries found.” That’s it! If you want to start recording your browsing history again, simply repeat the appropriate steps for Mac or Windows above and uncheck the locked or read-only boxes.
At this point, some of you are undoubtedly asking, “why not just use Incognito Mode?” It’s true that Incognito Mode will prevent Chrome from recording browsing history, but it also blocks cookies and interferes with many extensions. Also, preventing Chrome from recording browsing history means you do not have to remember to browse in Ignoto Mode if you never want Chrome to record your browsing history.
If you want the benefit of extensions and cookies, such as having websites remember your account info, but simply don’t want your browsing history recorded, the method described above is a good compromise.
Of course, if you want to reverse what you did, enabling Chrome to resume recording your browsing history again, just find that same history file and unlock it on a Mac or change it to read and write on Windows.
If you enjoyed this article, you might also like this TechJunkie article: Stay Focused Chrome Extension Review.
Do you have any suggestions on how to improve your privacy using Chrome? If so, please leave us a comment below!
Posted by10 months ago
Archived
they just disappeared today. there's no undo or restore all button at the bottom, like what happens when i accidentally hit the x on one of the thumbnails. anyone have any idea what's going on? the homepage is now just the google search bar. it look a lot like google.com but without the 'google search' and 'i'm feeling lucky' buttons under the bar.
edit: here's a solution i found HUGE thanks to u/Aboss (i hope i got that right)
Now like you said before, disappear bug happens again but you can fix it by:
Institute of banking and finance. *#use-google-local-ntp to 'Enabled'
Remove Thumbnails From Google Chrome Homepage 2018
this will get you the old thumbnails back instead of those ugly new ones.
edit edit: how do i unbold that stuff? the bolded lines just have the pound sign (or hashtag sign) in front of it.
edit edit edit: also a huge thanks to everyone in the comments for figuring all of this out and solving this for all of us here!
220 comments
When you open a new tab in Chrome, the browser app creates a New Tab page that displays sites you've recently visited along with your favorite apps and other information. You can view thumbnail images of your most-visited sites by clicking the 'Most Visited' button at the bottom of the page. These thumbnail images show how the corresponding Web page looked on your last visit. No button exists for refreshing these images, but you can perform the task manually.
Step 1
Close Chrome if it is open and then click the 'Start' button to open the Windows Start menu. Type 'run' and click the word 'Run' when it appears in the search results. Windows opens the Run window that allows you to paste commands.
Step 2
Paste the following text into the window's 'Open' text box:
%LOCALAPPDATA%GoogleChromeUser DataDefault
If you have multiple Chrome profiles, replace the word 'Default' with the name of the profile you wish to use. For example, if you want to refresh the thumbnails in a profile named 'MyProfile2,' paste the text shown below into the Open text box:
%LOCALAPPDATA%GoogleChromeUser DataMyProfile2
Step 3
Click 'OK.' Windows Explorer opens and displays the contents of your user profile. This profile contains two files that manage the thumbnail images on the New Tab page.
Step 4
Delete the files named 'Top Sites' and 'Top Sites-journal,' then launch Chrome. Press 'Ctrl-T' and click the 'Most Visited' button at the bottom of the page. Chrome displays blank thumbnail images. The sites associated with those thumbnails appear below the thumbnails.
Step 5
Double-click the first thumbnail to visit the corresponding Web page. Press 'Ctrl-T' to open a new tab. Note that the first thumbnail now has a current image of the site you visited. Repeat this process for the remaining seven thumbnails.
Tip
Delete a thumbnail if desired by holding your mouse cursor over it until an 'X' appears in the upper right corner. Click the 'X' and Chrome deletes the thumbnail, replacing it with one that represents another site you visit frequently.
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About the Author
After majoring in physics, Kevin Lee began writing professionally in 1989 when, as a software developer, he also created technical articles for the Johnson Space Center. Today this urban Texas cowboy continues to crank out high-quality software as well as non-technical articles covering a multitude of diverse topics ranging from gaming to current affairs.
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The most-visited websites feature on Google Toolbar might be convenient for you while at home, but at work, where numerous colleagues might share the same computers, it's sometimes too revealing. There are ways to either delete your most recently visited sites or to disable the feature completely. How you proceed exactly depends on how you define 'Google Toolbar.' For some, it is the Google add-on for Internet Explorer. For others, though, it's a feature built into the Google Chrome browser.
Internet Explorer
1.
Click the wrench icon on Google Toolbar and navigate to the Search Features section.
2.
Uncheck the 'Store Search History on My Computer' box and click 'Save.'
3.
Click 'Tools' from Internet Explorer's menu bar. Then click 'Delete Browsing History.' Ensure all the boxes related to browsing history are checked, and click 'Delete.'
Google Chrome
1.
Click the three-barred icon next to the browser address bar. Then select 'Settings.'
3.
Click the 'Clear Browsing Data' button to remove all of the sites you've visited, including your most-visited ones.
Google Chrome, Selectively
1.
Identify which of the most-visited sites you want to eliminate from Chrome's 'Most Visited' page.
2.
Click and drag the icon representing that site toward the bottom of your screen. A 'Remove From Chrome' box appears.
3.
Drag the icon to the 'Remove From Chrome' box and release. Repeat for each site you want removed.
Tip
In either Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, you can choose to browse in private mode, which ensures that your browsing history won't be recorded after you close the browser and thus won't display any sites as 'Most Visited.' Internet Explorer's private browsing feature is called InPrivate and Chrome's is named Incognito.
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About the Author
Aaron Charles began writing about 'pragmatic art' in 2006 for an online arts journal based in Minneapolis, Minn. After working for telecom giant Comcast and traveling to Oregon, he's written business and technology articles for both online and print publications, including Salon.com and 'The Portland Upside.'
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Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images News/Getty Images
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Charles, Aaron. 'How to Remove the Most-Visited Sites From the Google Toolbar.' Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/remove-mostvisited-sites-google-toolbar-69116.html. Accessed 08 July 2019.
Charles, Aaron. (n.d.). How to Remove the Most-Visited Sites From the Google Toolbar. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/remove-mostvisited-sites-google-toolbar-69116.html
Charles, Aaron. 'How to Remove the Most-Visited Sites From the Google Toolbar' accessed July 08, 2019. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/remove-mostvisited-sites-google-toolbar-69116.html
Note: Depending on which text editor you're pasting into, you might have to add the italics to the site name.