The Automatic Browser Profile Link
Google Chrome features a somewhat controversial login behavior. By default, if you sign into any Google web service—such as opening a tab and logging into Gmail or YouTube—Chrome will automatically sign your entire web browser profile into that same Google account. Your profile picture will suddenly appear in the top-right corner of the browser chrome.
Google does this to seamlessly enable background syncing of your bookmarks, history, and passwords. However, many users prefer to keep their browser application completely separate from their web accounts. If you are borrowing a friend’s computer, or if you simply don’t want your local browsing history inadvertently synced to your corporate Google account just because you checked your work email, you must disable the automatic browser sign-in.
How to Unlink Web Login from Browser Login
You can disable the automatic profile linking in Chrome’s Sync settings.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner and select Settings.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on You and Google.
- In the main pane, click on Sync and Google services.
- Scroll down to the “Other Google services” section.
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Allow Chrome sign-in.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position.
- Chrome will prompt you to restart the browser for the change to take effect. Click Relaunch.
From now on, logging into Gmail on a webpage will only log you into that specific webpage. Your Chrome browser application itself will remain completely unauthenticated and disconnected from your Google account profile.