Chrome Canary lets you Take Screenshots in Incognito on Android

To protect users’ privacy, beginning with Chrome v65, Google has taken away the ability to take screenshots in Incognito mode on Android. Now the company is looking at its decision again and is working to make it possible again.

In Chrome on Android, if you open a new incognito tab and try to capture a page screenshot, you’ll receive a “can’t take screenshots here” message. This may not happen with future versions of Chrome.

Before getting into details, you should know

Android uses screenshots to create thumbnails.
Google has disabled the Screenshots feature to stop Android from showing thumbnails of incognito pages

Despite the issue, there are web browsers that still offer a setting for Screenshots in private mode.

For instance,

Kiwi browser provides “Protect Incognito Windows” Privacy Setting with the description “Hide content and prevent screenshots in incognito mode”
Firefox for Android (Fenix) also gives an ” Allow screenshots in Private browsing” Setting.

Google UI designers are not in favor of offering a setting due to the following complexities

1. Incognito doesn’t have any existing settings making it non-trivial to add a ‘new’ incognito Setting

2. Until the requested change is made in how Android segments screen-obfuscation and screenshot capability, the setting would not be an on or off choice, but rather ‘Screenshot Enabled’ OR ‘Hide Screens’ ”

For now, the Chromium team added a flag to Chrome 89 Canary to solve the issue.