What switching to private actually turns off.
A private or incognito window stops three things happening on the device in front of you. It stops the page you visit being added to your ordinary browsing history, it stops any cookies picked up during that session being kept once the window closes, and it stops anything you type into a search box or an address bar being saved to the list of suggestions that would otherwise appear later. Close the window and, on that one device, the visit behaves as though it never took place.
That is a genuinely useful thing. A shared laptop, a partner's tablet picked up to check one address, a hotel business centre terminal used for ten minutes: these are the exact situations a private window was built for, because the next person to open the browser has nothing left to find. It is a local, device level cleanup tool, and within that narrow job it does exactly what it promises, no more and no less.
What it was never built to hide.
The limits start the moment a request leaves the device. Your internet provider still sees which sites you connect to, at the moment you connect to them, whatever browsing mode is active, because a private window changes what your browser remembers rather than what your network sees passing through it. A workplace or hotel network run by someone else can log the same information at their end, unaffected by anything happening in your own browser.
A site itself can also still recognise you. Signing into an account inside a private window links that visit to the account the same way it would in any ordinary window, and a site using fingerprinting, reading details like screen size, installed fonts and time zone rather than a stored cookie, can sometimes still build a rough picture of a repeat visitor across sessions. Private browsing removes the easiest form of tracking, the file left behind on your own machine, without touching the harder network level or fingerprint based kind.
The address bar still remembers, briefly.
Inside the private session itself, typed addresses and searches behave normally while the window stays open, autocomplete keeps offering to finish what you are typing, because the memory only clears when the window closes rather than being switched off entirely. Close every private window and that particular list is gone, but a half typed address left visible on a screen for someone glancing over your shoulder is a separate problem, one no browsing mode addresses on its own.
Bookmarks behave differently again. Anything deliberately bookmarked while in a private window is usually saved permanently, carrying over into ordinary browsing rather than disappearing with the rest of the session, since a bookmark is treated as a deliberate choice rather than incidental history. Worth remembering if the whole point of the private window was to leave nothing behind on the device.
Private tabs on a phone work slightly differently.
Mobile browsers add a layer desktop browsers mostly skip. Safari on an iPhone can require Face ID or a passcode before a private tab group is shown again, even to someone who has already unlocked the phone itself, and the private tab group sits visually apart from ordinary tabs so it is not stumbled into by accident while scrolling through open pages. Chrome on Android offers a broadly similar option, hiding incognito tabs behind an additional biometric prompt when the setting is switched on.
This closes a gap desktop private browsing does not really have: a phone is far more likely to be picked up by someone else mid session, a partner glancing at a notification, a friend borrowing it to check directions, than a laptop usually is. Turning the extra lock on costs one settings visit and is worth doing on any phone used for anything private.
A sensible way to use it around a booking.
Open a private window before searching our companions, or looking through profiles filed under petite or tall, and close it once you are done rather than leaving it running for the rest of the day. That single habit removes the local trace without adding a single extra step to how you already browse.
It pairs neatly with the booking itself. Checking rates or reading about hotel outcall for an evening in Oud-Zuid or elsewhere in a private window leaves nothing behind in your ordinary history for later, and the window closes exactly as cleanly as it opened.
Where it fits alongside everything else.
Private browsing solves one part of a wider picture, and the other parts are worth knowing rather than assuming a single setting covers them. A device that locks itself quickly, a browser cleared of anything left from before you started using private windows, and a search engine that does not build a running profile of you: each closes a different gap. Our guide to clearing browser history properly covers the ground private browsing does not touch, and private search engines looks at the search side on its own.
None of it needs to be complicated. A private window kept open only for as long as it is needed, a handful of minutes spent once on the settings the other guides walk through, and the rest of your browsing carries on exactly as it always has, unaffected by any of it.