How to Restore Private Browsing Confirmation Prompt in Mozilla Firefox?
Mozilla Firefox comes with “Private Browsing” feature which allows you to visit the Internet without saving any information about which websites, etc you visited. It might become very useful when you use a shared computer and don’t want others to know which websites you visit.
To start private browsing in Firefox, you can either press “Ctrl+Shift+P” keys together or select “Start Private Browsing” option from Firefox Menu button.
When you start private browsing, Firefox shows a confirmation prompt message as shown in following screenshot:
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You need to click on “Start Private Browsing” button to use this feature. The alert box also contains a checkbox “Do not show this message again“. If you accidentally or intentionally enabled this checkbox while clicking on “Start Private Browsing” button, Firefox will never show the alert message again in future.
Firefox doesn’t provide any option to re-enable this alert box in its Preferences window. So the question is how to restore this confirmation prompt?
Don’t worry! You can restore private browsing confirmation prompt using secret about:config page:
1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll confirm, click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
2. Now type private in the Filter box and look for following boolean key:
browser.privatebrowsing.dont_prompt_on_enter
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3. The entry “browser.privatebrowsing.dont_prompt_on_enter” would be set to true. Double-click on it or right-click on it and select “Toggle“. It’ll set its value to false.
4. That’s it. It’ll immediately restore private browsing confirmation prompt.
BONUS TIP: As you can see there is another option “browser.privatebrowsing.autostart” given for private browsing mode. Its set to false by default. You can set it to true to always start Mozilla Firefox in private browsing mode. You can also enable the same option from Options -> Privacy tab.
Does this work for iPhone 4? If not, do you know anything similar I can use on the iPhone 4?
Hi,
Thanks for the above instructions. I installed an applications called Incognito gone and it disabled private browsing in all three browsers: chrome, firefox and IE. I deleted the files from the system but I still can’t enable the incognito mode for my browsers. I also tried to restore the system but it offers me a restore point after the installation of incognito gone. I use windows 8.
Could you help me disable this app please?
Thanks,
Essraa
^^ Try to reinstall the software and re-enable private browsing mode using it. After that you can uninstall the software.
Hi VG,
Thanks for your suggestion. I uninstalled chrome, for example, and re-installed it again but in vain. This incognito gone doesn’t appear in the programs list of the control panel. Any ideas how I can get rid of it?
^^ I meant to reinstall the software which you used to disable private browsing mode.
Hi VG,
I visited a website on the weekend in private browsing and when I closed out of that site I noticed that the “Start Private Browsing” option had disappeared from my Mozilla “Tools” dropdown tab up the top. I don’t know how to restore it. Can you help me?
Thanks DN
^^ Try the built-in shortcut Ctrl+Shift+P.