After being rolled out to YouTube earlier this year, Google Maps is the next app from the search giant to get the ‘Incognito Mode’ that the company hopes will reassure users about their privacy while using the company’s apps and services. Believed to have been first spotted by Android Police, the launch of the new feature was officially announced by the company through an official post on the Google Maps support forums earlier this week.
The feature is already available on my device, which is running Google Maps v10.28.2, the latest stable version of the software on Google Play. In case you want to use the feature, you can do so by updating to the latest version of the app from the Play Store, then tapping on your profile picture on the top-right and finally, choosing the ‘Turn on Incognito Mode’ option (see the composite screenshots).
As can be seen from the screenshots below, your profile image will be replaced by Google’s trademark ‘Incognito’ avatar that denotes Google Chrome’s Incognito mode. Interestingly, once you activate Incognito in Google Maps, it stays that way until you manually change it, which means you’ll remain anonymous even after you restart the app from scratch after clearing it from the memory or force stopping it from the Settings app.
Do note, however, that the rollout only just began a few hours ago, so it might take a while to reach all users around the world. Also, it will only be available on Android to start off with, before being rolled out to iOS users. The feature is still listed as ‘Coming Soon’ for iOS users, with no specific timeframe for the launch.
