Several browsers have identical privacy settings with similar toggles and warning sounds. The promise is similar: block trackers, disable cookies, and reduce what websites can gather. After using Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and even the smaller browsers, I now understand that these small controls reduce the tracking surface area but don’t fundamentally change how the websites track you.

Chrome is a clear example. It’s very polished but serves as the foundation for Google’s ad-driven economy and thrives on long-term data retention. However, Brave takes a different architectural path. It blocks ads by default but also redefines what a browser should remember, and its Forgetful Browsing is an example of this shift. This is the one feature Chrome will never implement, and one of the reasons Brave is the only Chromium browser I trust.

What Forgetful Browsing actually does

Brave’s per-site ephemeral storage, explained clearly

Brave uses Forgetful Browsing as a solution to long-term tracking. It refuses to store identifiers in the first place, rather than blocking or disguising them. This feature works as a per-site ephemeral storage system, resetting a website’s memory as soon as you leave it. This way, the site behaves as if it has never seen you when you return—no lingering IDs, cookies, or retained cache entries.

While Incognito mode creates temporary sessions for the browser window and wipes everything when you close it, Forgetful Browsing resets data automatically on a per-site basis. It’s not simply preventing storage (like blocking cookies); it actively clears any allowed data once a session ends.

This is a surprisingly simple mechanism: Brave isolates site data and discards it on exit, creating a clean slate. You can keep certain sites persistent because the feature allows selective enabling. The browser remembers nothing unless you choose otherwise.

OS Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS

Price model Free

Brave is an open-source web browser focused on privacy, speed, and user control. Its standout features include Shields, which block ads, trackers, cookies, fingerprinting, and more by default, giving users granular privacy protection without the need for extensions.

Why Google will never add this to Chrome

Business incentives that directly conflict with ephemeral browsing

On paper, it may not be technically difficult for Chrome to add this feature. However, the challenge is with Google’s incentives, since its advertising ecosystem is built on persistent identifiers. Forgetful Browsing breaks behavioral profiling, long-term interest grouping, and multi-session ad targeting.

Google has new initiatives like Privacy Sandbox and the Topics API, and earlier work like FLoC, but they still rely on cross-session insights. Their privacy-themed frameworks preserve the ability to show relevant ads even though they reduce how much raw data is exposed. Over time, they still don’t erase the concept of user identity, like Forgetful Browsing.

The ephemeral model works against data retention, and Google won’t adopt a feature that undermines the foundation upon which its revenue is built.

How Forgetful Browsing changes real-world browsing

A browser that treats every visit like the first

You get a totally different experience after enabling Forgetful Browsing on a site. The site immediately stops recognizing you as a returning visitor. This guarantees that no welcome-back messages or recommendations are based on earlier searches. Ads stop tracking you across the web because there’s no persistent identifier to attach to, and your visits become clean, fresh interactions.

This feature is great for sensitive browsing or research. As a writer, it comes in handy because I research several apps and tools daily and wouldn’t want to start seeing loads of ads for things I investigate. Forgetful Browsing automatically applies the reset, and I don’t need any extra tools or manual action.

The feature is also great on public or shared computers, reducing the chances of someone accessing your cached pages, autofill history, or personalized recommendations when you leave the computer. Normal browsing becomes oddly sticky once you’ve used Forgetful Browsing for a while.

How it compares to Incognito Mode, tracking protection, and other ‘privacy’ features

Where Forgetful Browsing fills a gap that other tools don’t cover

While some people expect Incognito Mode to be a privacy shield, it mainly hides activity from the local computer. It’s not a per-site forgetting system and won’t reset sites individually while you browse normally. It still allows sites to store data and track your behavior for that session.

Even though tracking protection blocks trackers, scripts, and domains that follow you, whatever storage the site manages to set is persistent. You’ll need to manually remove this data or hope that the browser decides to purge it later. Tracking protection is not the best privacy solution.

With Firefox Containers, sites stay isolated in separate buckets, but data is still preserved across sessions. While it keeps different identities separate, a container still remembers you. And even VPNs don’t touch local identifiers at all, even though they mask your IP address. Forgetful Browsing fills the unique gap of eliminating per-site memory across sessions.

Finding the right balance with Forgetful Browsing

Forgetful Browsing is an effective defense if you don’t consider long-term personalization necessary. Some of its biggest benefits are keeping trackers and retargeted ads at bay, especially for one-off logins, casual reading, and price checking. It’s a subtle but powerful feature, and it makes me consider Brave as one of the best browsers.

However, I must note that not all sites function optimally without persistence. Banking, email, and productivity platforms all rely on stable sessions. The good news is that Brave allows you to choose when and where ephemeral storage is applied.