Google Chrome is a market-leading browser, without any doubt. It is being loved and used by many users all around the world. However, this doesn’t stop Google from adding new features. In fact, it encourages them to add new features and make the user experience better than the best. That being said, some of the features it’s adding are more controversial than the others. One of those features is Idle Detection. In this article, we are going to see how you can enable or disable the Google Chrome Idle Detection feature and discuss more about this feature.
What is Idle Detection in Chrome browser?
Idle Detection as the name suggests will identify when you are idle and not interacting with the website. So, if your mouse or keyboard is not moving, or if the screen server is activated, or if you don’t move to some other tab, then the Idle Detection API notifies to the developer that the user is idle. This as you may have guessed, raised some eyebrows. Users are reasonably scrutinizing the privacy concerns.
If someone wants to look at the bright side of things, the clear merit of this feature is that it will allow developers to make the site more captivating. According to Google, Idle Detection will smartly change the way you use the web. Following are some of the things that Idle Detection will enable.
- If you are not using an app, API will return it to the Home.
- Allow Social Media sites such as Instagram and Facebook to know when you are active.
- Programs that have to do complex calculations can use the feature to stop calculations when you are inactive.
Apart from these features, it will enable developers to use this information in all sorts of ways. And according to most of the critics, this is an area of concern. This information can be then used to manipulate their ideas. Also, Google, a company with poor track records in the area of privacy, is giving information about your activity to corporates who are not deprived of this criticism.
Even though, the feature comes enabled in Chrome 93 and later, Google gives you control over this feature. Whether you want to enable or disable Idle Detection, it’s up to you. Hereinafter, we are going to how you can turn it off and turn it back on if you want. So, let us go to the guide.
How to Disable Idle Detection in Google Chrome
If you want to disable Idle Detection on your Google Chrome Browser, follow the prescribed steps.
- Open Chrome.
- Click on the three vertical dots and select Settings or paste chrome://settings in the address bar and hit Enter.
- Go to Security and Privacy > Site Settings.
- Click on Additional permissions.
- Look for Your device use and click on it to open.
- Select Don’t allow sites to know when you’re actively using your device from the Default behavior.
This will disable Idle Detection.
If you wish to just block certain sites from using your activity data, click on Add button associated with Not allowed to know when you’re actively using your device.
This will do the job for you.
Read: New Security, Privacy, Extensions, Safety settings in Chrome browser
How do I disable Privacy Sandbox and Idle Detection in Chrome?
To disable Idle Detection, scroll up and check the guide. You just need to go to Chrome’s Settings and change the settings.
Before disabling Privacy Sandbox, we need to understand what it is, and to do that, we should know what Google as a company is and what is FLoC.
Google makes a huge chunk of its revenue from ads. You may have noticed most of the sites you visit has some sort of ad. These ads are customized for you depending on your searches and activity. Earlier, most of the companies tend to take this data and use it accordingly. They identify you as a separate token with a unique identity and then curate ads specifically for you.
What Google, with FLoC, has been trying to do is put you in a group with people of similar taste. Then they will give that information of the activity of that group to the companies to show ads to that group. This is done to improve your privacy.
A lot of users are not on board with the idea and want to disable this feature. Enabled Privacy Sandbox on your Chrome browser doesn’t mean that FLoC is enabled on your computer. But it does mean that Google has the right to turn it on whenever they want.
To disable Privacy Sandbox, paste the following URL in your address bar or Omnibox and hit Enter.
chrome://settings/privacySandbox
Now, use the toggle available for Trials to disable or turn off the Privacy Sandbox.
That’s it!
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