Claude God Tip #18: Incognito Mode is My New Google
Published: December 24, 2025 • 4 min read
Welcome to another Claude God Tips episode. Today, we're talking about a small but incredibly useful feature.
Have you ever wanted to ask Claude a completely random question—one that has nothing to do with your current work? Maybe you didn't feel like it deserved a brand new chat, but you also didn't want to Google it.
Well, it turns out Claude has an incognito mode.
Two Ways to Turn It On
The Slow Way: Start a brand new chat by clicking the new chat button (white cross on orange background). Then click the little ghost icon at the top right of the screen. Note: You won't see this ghost icon if the current chat isn't brand new.
The Fast Way: Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows or Cmd+Shift+I on Mac to turn on incognito mode from anywhere in Claude. You don't need to start a new chat or have the ghost icon visible.
Why Use Incognito Mode?
Privacy from training: On Claude's settings page, under the Privacy tab, you can toggle "Allow the use of your chats and coding sessions to train and improve Anthropic AI models." If you have this enabled but want to ask something you'd prefer not be used for training, incognito mode is your friend.
Bypass stored memory: Claude stores memory details about you that apply across all chats and projects (unless you disable it in the Capabilities tab). Incognito mode lets you get responses unaffected by that stored context.
Keep your chats clean: This is my favorite use case. I see incognito mode as my quick Google search option within Claude.
Why Chat Organization Matters
If you've read most of my blog posts, you know I care about keeping chats organized by topic. Too many unrelated questions in a single chat will bloat your context window and lead to biased responses or unexpected behavior.
As I explained in my post on tokens and context windows, every time you send a message, Claude receives the entire conversation history as input tokens:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ MESSAGE 1 │
│ You send 100 tokens → Claude responds with 200 tokens │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MESSAGE 2 │
│ Claude receives: 300 tokens (previous) + your new message │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MESSAGE 3 │
│ Claude receives: 500+ tokens (all previous) + new message │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ MESSAGE 10 │
│ Claude receives: THOUSANDS of tokens + your new message │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
When you understand this, you probably don't want to ask a random question about workouts in a chat where you're writing code. That's where incognito mode comes in.
Bonus Tip: Quick New Chat Shortcut
For Claude Desktop users: You can use Ctrl+N on Windows or Cmd+N on Mac anywhere within Claude Desktop to start a new chat. When you use this shortcut, you get a floating input box where you can type your question. The moment you send it, you're redirected to a new chat conversation.
This is incredibly handy if you're like me and love keyboard shortcuts for the sake of speed.
Note: The Ctrl+N shortcut won't work in the browser since it opens a new tab instead.
And that's all for our Claude God Tip of the day.
As always, thanks for reading!