How to Disable Safari Private Browsing on Mac

If you hand over your Mac to someone else, you may not know what they were up to during their browsing sessions. Now, put kids into the equation, and that becomes a severe issue due to the numerous harmful websites out there. That is why you should know how to disable Safari Private Browsing on Mac.

But before we begin with the article, it is vital to know the risks associated with disabling Private Browsing on Safari for Mac. When you disable Private Browsing, your browsing history, cookies, and other browsing data are stored, which can compromise your privacy.

However, on the flip side, it also offers benefits such as personalized browsing experiences and easier access to previously visited sites. With this understanding, let’s begin with the article.

How to Use Screen Time to Turn Off Private Browsing on Safari

Screen Time made its debut on the iPhone and iPad alongside iOS 12. Not only does it provide the ability to keep a tab on the activities across all of your iOS devices, but it also contains a healthy dose of web content restrictions. The adult content restriction, in particular, not only blocks all NSFW content but also deactivates Safari’s Private Browsing tabs.

Let’s begin with the steps.

Step 1: Press the ‘Command + Space’ key on your keyboard to open Spotlight Search. Then, type Settings or System Settings, and hit the Return key.

Step 2: In the Settings window, go to Screen Time on the left pane.

Step 3: On the right pane, scroll down, and under Restrictions, click on ‘Content & Privacy.’

Step 4: Under ‘Content & Privacy,’ toggle on the feature.

Step 5: Now, click on Content Restrictions.

Step 6: In the pop-up modal, click on the chevron (arrow) drop-down icon next to the ‘Access to Web Content’ option.

Step 7: From the drop-down menu, choose ‘Limit Adult Websites.’ Then, click Done.

And that’s it. Private Browsing in Safari is now disabled. You can no longer open Private Browsing windows within Safari — the New Private Window option on the Safari File menu will appear grayed out, and the related ‘Shift + Command + N’ keyboard shortcut will also not work.

If you want to re-enable Private Browsing in Safari on your Mac, head back into Settings > Screen Time > click ‘Content & Privacy’ > Content Restrictions > Access to Web Content > Unrestricted Access.

Synced Devices and Screen Time Passcodes

If you have other macOS or iOS devices tied to your Apple ID, your restrictions will also carry over to them by default. If you want to stop that from happening, follow the below steps.

Step 1: Press the ‘Command + Space’ key on your keyboard to open Spotlight Search. Then, type Settings or System Settings, and hit the Return key.

Step 2: In the Settings window, go to Screen Time on the left pane.

Step 3: On the right pane, scroll down, and below ‘Content & Privacy’ toggle off ‘Share across devices.’

There you go. The settings you made on the current device will not get synced across your other Apple device. Additionally, you can also set up a Screen Time Passcode, which will help prevent anyone else from messing around with your Screen Time settings.

How to Get Rid of Private Browsing in Guest Mode

By default, macOS imposes adult content filters when logged in as a guest user. That means Private Browsing in Safari is already disabled. But if that doesn’t appear to be the case, then here’s what you must do:

Step 1: Press the ‘Command + Space’ key on your keyboard to open Spotlight Search. Then, type Settings or System Settings, and hit the Return key.

Step 2: From the left pane, navigate to ‘Users & Groups.’ On the right pane, click on the ‘i’ button right next to the Guest User.

Step 3: Toggle on ‘Allow guests to log in to this computer.’

Step 4: To enable this setting, you’ll need to enter your Mac’s password.

Step 5: Once enabled, toggle on ‘Limit adult websites.’

This should disable Private Browsing windows when using Safari as a guest. However, all data within the Guest User account is deleted each time that a user signs out, which kind of beats the purpose of having Private Browsing disabled in the first place. But imposing limits on NSFW content is still a major plus point.

That said, if you have any queries we missed addressing, check out the FAQ section below.

FAQs on Disabling Safari Private Browsing on Mac

Turn off Private Browsing

Now that you know how to disable Safari Private Browsing on Mac, you can know what goes on when someone else uses your Mac. You may also want to know how to disable incognito mode in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.