Hide & Seek

Hide & Seek lets you search in Google and Bing as an anonymous user, and simultaneously use their other services, like Gmail and Outlook as a logged in user. You can do this without having to use Private Browsing.

With both Google and Microsoft, if you’re logged into one service, you’re logged into all of them. For example, if you use Gmail on the browser, you become automatically logged in when you use Google search. This means that Google can (and does) associate your search query with your Google account. To counter this, you can use Hide & Seek to hide your identity in Google search, while still staying logged into Gmail.

Hide & Seek has nothing to do with “blocking ads”. It is simply about maintaining your privacy and anonymity while using Google and Bing for web search.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Hide & Seek supports hiding your identity in:

  • Google Web Search
  • Google Images search
  • Google Videos search
  • Bing web search
  • Bing images search
  • Bing videos search
  • Bing news

Before using Hide & Seek, you’ll have to decide which Google and Bing services you’d like to use logged out. Then, configure Hide & Seek to hide your identity in those services. After that, you can search as usual and your searches will be performed as a logged out user. You can simultaneously use other Google or Microsoft services (like Gmail or Outlook) in other tabs as a logged in user.

Some caveats:

  • On the iPhone: When you’d like to follow a Bing search result, you might have to use the ‘Open in New Tab’ option rather than tapping on a result directly.
  • On the Mac: If you’re using macOS Sierra, searching from the Safari address bar does not hide your identity from the search site, so please avoid doing that, or upgrade your OS.
  • On the Mac: When using Google Images search and when Hide & Seek is hiding your identity for that search, clicking on the ‘View page’ or ‘View image’ links might show a redirect notice with a link you can follow, rather than directly taking you to the destination page

You can find out more in the Skeptic’s FAQ.

For iPhone / iPad

App Store

Version 1.1
Free Universal App
Requires iOS 10 or later on a 64-bit device

For Mac

Safari Extensions Gallery

Version 1.2
Free Safari Extension
Requires macOS 10.11 or later