I’ll often find myself working on a site that I’m logged in to, but I need to see what things look like when not logged in, or logged in as a different user. It’s a huge pain to log out and log back in every time I need to do this. I could use another web browser entirely, but that’s also a bit annoying and not always practical.

Thankfully there’s a better way! You can use your web browser’s private browsing/incognito mode to open any web page and view it as if you weren’t logged in without actually having to log out. Private browsing using an entirely different session with separate cookies, local storage, and so on, making it a quick and easy way to see what it’s like to be logged out without actually logging out. You can even log in using another account, all without disrupting your normal browsing session.

To open a private browsing window go to the File menu and select the New Private Window (Safari and Firefox) or New Incognito Window (Chrome) option.