Q: How to disable private browsing in safari on OS X El Capitan?
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Sep 12, 2016 5:00 AMby VikingOSX,In El Capitan, you must deliberately invoke a New Private Window from the File menu, or keyboard shortcut to achieve private browsing. As you are the stated, only user of your Mac, how is it that you cannot simply avoid invoking this menu item?
There are no user configurable settings that can deactivate that hard-coded, New Private Window menu entry.
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Sep 12, 2016 2:26 PMby Che87,In my original post I described previous ways of doing so. There must be a way of doing so through plist protocols to turn the code to an integer value of 1 to hide it. I did it with google chrome via the institutions in this YouTube video - http://youtu.be/qF6UmSrR6ZQ which used an app called pref setter to alter the code.
Now as to your response of, "how is it that you cannot simply avoid invoking this menu item?" There are many reasons to not want the option there altogether. The fact that you cannot think of one at all and simply narrow your response to - why don't you just not use it shows a lack of insight or possibly caring on your part. Of course I or anyone else could simply not use it if we desire. But some people would also like the option not to be there altogether.
For example - someone who has a *********** addiction may not want that option available to them because it disables extensions from blocking **** sites they wish not to view. I'm sure I could use many more. just realize I am far from the only person with this question or desire. Do a quick Google search and you'll see many people, blogs, and discussions on forums as to how to do what I have described.
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Sep 12, 2016 5:36 PMby Meg St._Clair,Che87 wrote:
Now as to your response of, "how is it that you cannot simply avoid invoking this menu item?" There are many reasons to not want the option there altogether. The fact that you cannot think of one at all and simply narrow your response to - why don't you just not use it shows a lack of insight or possibly caring on your part.
Or, it was an attempt to get further information on why you wanted to do something so that it might generate further possible ideas for solutions.
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Sep 12, 2016 6:11 PMby Che87,That's a nice way of looking at it I suppose but I highly doubt that. The "solution" essentially was, don't use it. That is not a solution. Also it doesn't really matter why one chooses not to have the function available, as that would not effect any solution given to disable it. Lastly I would point you to all of the other times it has been brought up in the apple support forums - , , , , etc. They all have lots of people, also very often VikingOSX giving non-solutions. I did not ask how to enable parental controls, I asked how to disable private browsing. The real issue here is that Apple has decided to make safari essential to the OSX system (apparently) so it cannot be disabled, and also difficult to tweak protocols on. Therefore making it extremely difficult to handle if you want to get rid of private browsing for personal reasons. It's kind of getting annoying having people give zero support and opinions about why a person may desire to disable the feature. This is just another example of such behavior.
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Sep 13, 2016 2:34 PMby Che87,Well here is my work around. Silly you can't just edit the plist in safari to hide private browsing from the mainmenu.nib but this works too.
1. download google chrome
2. use this youtube video https://youtu.be/qF6UmSrR6ZQ and the free application pref setter to disable/hide incognito mode (the equivalent to private browsing in safari). Unlike safari, this way actually allows you to change the plist and disable incognito mode.
Just a note - you need to use the IncognitoModeAvailability and then set it to Integer then set it to 1.
3. use this website's http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac- os-x/ instructions to disable SIP on OS X El Capitan.
4. after the reboot you can find the safari application, right click, unlock the padlock on the bottom right, and set all of the permissions to "no access" or "read only". Then if you try to access safari nothing will happen.
5. Use google chrome, which after following steps 1 & 2 no longer has incognito mode as an option.
