Bye, Chrome Incognito Mode! This is my new favorite privacy browser on Android

There are a handful of specific web browsing tasks that I’d rather my phone forget, especially those that demand heightened privacy and security. This includes mundane searches I’ll never revisit or more personal tasks like purchasing an item online or logging into a streaming service to tweak a setting. For all these instances, I switch from the digital fingerprint that is my primary browser to a secondary, privacy-first browser.

I’m always looking to streamline my workflow, so for the longest time, Chrome’s Incognito Mode was my go-to solution. However, a far better, more sensible option was right there in the Play Store all along.

I recently joined the DuckDuckGo bandwagon and am so glad I did. While the company is best known for its Google Search alternative, it’s also responsible for my new favorite privacy browser on Android. Let me explain why.

First, let me say this: there’s nothing wrong with using Incognito Mode to keep your main browser data separate from snapshot web tasks. Using Chrome for this allowed me to reduce the number of browsers I had installed while keeping my accounts and history separate from random searches and Wikipedia rabbit holes. But this wasn’t an optimal solution. I often forgot to activate Incognito Mode, which defeated the purpose entirely. I later swapped to Mozilla’s privacy browser, Firefox Focus, but its single-tab design is far less flexible than Chrome. I needed a solution as swift as Google’s browser, one that wouldn’t store my browsing data if I didn’t want it to, and one that prioritized privacy. This led me to DuckDuckGo.

I’ve been using this avian-inspired browser for the past few weeks. While many users online feel it’s too basic for their primary browsing habits, I see its simplicity as one of its alluring qualities, making it perfect as a secondary browser.

It’s polished, well-optimized, and surprisingly easy to use, and its sensible UI plays a major role here. The settings menu houses everything tweakable within the browser, making finding the exact toggle you want easy. Google should also note that this is how you implement a bottom bar on a browser. DuckDuckGo makes one-handed surfing super simple, as all the essential buttons are at the screen’s bottom-right corner alongside the address bar. When I tap the latter, it remains readily accessible at the top of my keyboard.

As I mentioned, DuckDuckGo is best known for its search engine, and that’s the default here. You might find the Bing-derived results slightly different if you’re a committed Google Search user. This can be a positive or negative depending on your stance. I’ve found that what it serves is as good, if not better, than Google’s in many respects.

The Search Assist feature is also far slicker and more useful than AI Overviews. Searching “Cape Town,” for example, offers a table of key facts, from the city’s founding date to the HDI and GDP. I can further the search by asking additional questions below the result. I’m an AI skeptic, but I believe DuckDuckGo’s AI search implementation is more practical than Google’s.

If you want even more AI, there’s also Duck.ai, a built-in chatbot offering access to several models, including GPT-5 mini, Claude Haiku 3.5, and Mistral Small 3. While this isn’t one of the features that drew me to the browser, it will appeal to those who enjoy sampling more than just ChatGPT or Gemini. The browser makes it easy to access Duck.ai through a shortcut on the address bar. I like this choice because it allows users to search the web via its traditional search engine or an established AI model.

DuckDuckGo has a great UI, solid search engine, and shortcuts to AI features, but this isn’t chiefly why it’s my browser of choice for privacy-critical tasks. Open settings, and you’ll find various Protections available to the user. These items can be enabled individually, providing additional buffers from cookies, app tracking, web tracking, and scams. I appreciate that I can toggle these to my liking — granular settings are good!

Tying this all together is the Fire Button — the feature I use far more often than I ever thought I would. It’s effectively a big red nuke button that, when pressed, deletes all browsing history, cookies, and data from your current session. Once triggered, a cute animation of an inferno, whirlpool, or windstorm sweeps across the screen, leaving you with an immaculate browser once again.

This is where DuckDuckGo deviates slightly from Incognito Mode on most browsers. Sometimes I may want to continue a previous session about a fascinating Wikipedia rabbit hole or return to my cart from a random online retailer. When using Incognito Mode on Chrome or Firefox, my session is lost as soon as I close the app. With DuckDuckGo, I have the choice to clear my session or keep it for later.

At this point, you’re likely wondering why I don’t replace Chrome and Firefox with DuckDuckGo if I love it so much. Well, it’s good, but it’s not that good. As I mentioned, it’s pretty barebones in design, which works in its favor for how I use it, but it makes for a poor main browser.

Thanks to its vast array of extensions, I still prefer using Firefox as my web anchor. DuckDuckGo lacks this capability, but considering that Chrome on mobile lacks this feature, you might want to consider switching full-time.

DuckDuckGo’s focus on privacy, its excellent search engine, and heap of online protection features make it a brilliant session browser. Goodbye, Incognito Mode. I won’t miss you at all.