You may have noticed that the most recent Chrome update includes a change to the way the browser syncs to your Google account. Specifically, if you sign into or out of Gmail, your Google account will be signed into or out of Chrome automatically.
If that happens, your bookmarks, saved passwords, and other synced data won’t be accessible until you sign back in manually, not to mention it forcibly signs you out of every other Google service as well. On the other hand, if you happen to sign in to any of Google’s services, your Google account will be signed into Chrome. Should you have Google Sync enabled, then all your data will be synced as well, even if you’re on a computer you don’t normally use.
It’s a bit of an odd change, frankly. In the past, the Google account signed into Chrome could be different from the one signed into Gmail, Drive, or YouTube. Users would remain signed in and synced with Google Chrome even if they signed out of Gmail, and vice-versa. However, following the Version 69 Chrome update, some users began reporting being automatically signed out of Chrome, and as of Version 71, Google began automatically signing users in.
Not everyone is happy with the change. The auto-sign out and de-sync is causing confusion for some users who are used to jumping between multiple Gmail accounts. Alternatively, privacy-minded users are suspicious of Google forcibly signing into their accounts, as this makes their data potentially accessible and trackable if they ever sign in to a Google service from Chrome.
Adrienne Porter, a Google engineer working on Chrome, explained the reasoning behind this on Twitter, which mostly comes down to making it less likely to accidentally sync data to the wrong accounts on multi-user devices. She also made sure to clarify that this doesn’t mean that your browsing data is being tracked or saved, as that requires your account to be “synced,” which must be enabled separately. However, as some have pointed out, this appears to be a move towards making users more likely to enable the account syncing in the first place.
Whether you’re a multi-account user annoyed by the extra steps this makes, or you’re concerned about the privacy implications, here’s what to know to get around the issue.
It’s fixable, for now
If you’ve noticed this odd change and you want it fixed, we’ve got some good news... and some potentially bad news.
The good news is: for now, you can turn off this feature if it’s giving you trouble. The bad news is, it’s possible this fix could only be a temporary bandaid, one that Google can undo at any time. It should work for now, though.
Of course, there’s also always the potential that Google could just undo the new feature entirely if they get enough negative feedback on it. We’ll be quietly hoping for that to be the case.
At any rate, with that quick caveat out of the way, let’s turn off that pesky account link.
Disable Google Chrome Sync’s Auto-sign out
The following method will work on all desktop versions of the Chrome browser, as well as ChromeOS, and on Android devices.
Open a new Chrome browser window, then type or copy and paste the following address into the address bar: chrome://flags/#account-consistency
This will open a new page containing an item list with drop-down menus next to each. The page should have automatically jumped you down about halfway to the desired item, “Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar,” and the menu box next to it should read, “default.”
To disable the sign-in link, click the drop-down box, and set it to “disabled.” Once that’s done, all you need to do is restart Chrome. This will only take effect once Chrome is entirely restarted, so make sure you close all browser windows.
And that should do it—Chrome should go back to acting like it used to.
If you’ve come across this post and the above address does not work or you can’t find the flag, it’s possible that it has been removed from Chrome by now. That’s potentially a good thing, as it could mean that Google has reversed the auto-signout decision... or it could mean we’re now stuck in an automatically de-syncing dystopia with no hope of fixing it.
That said, if the above method doesn’t work for you, there are some slightly more aggressive options. These include this registry hack, as well as UnGoogled Chromium, which is a third-party browser built from an older version of Chrome that strips out the Google integration. Finally, if you’re unsure about those options, or if you’re simply at wit’s end, there are plenty of Chrome-alternatives for browsing the internet. You may find yourself using one sooner or later if Google continues to make changes like these.
Updated on 9/24/2018 at 11:55 PST: This post was updated to reflect further security changes included in Chrome Version 71 and their privacy implications, as well as secondary workarounds.