At its I/O event earlier this year, Google announced it would be bringing enhanced privacy controls to some of its services, including the ability to delete your activity history and incognito mode for more of its apps. Now, it's delivering and expanding on some of its announcements.
First, as previously announced, Google has brought an incognito mode to the Maps app. As you'd expect, once you turn it on, the app won't save any of the places you search for and it won't use that information to customize your experiences. You can turn it on in the user menu that opens when you tap your profile picture.
Google is also expanding its automatic history deletion feature - which was previously available for your Google account's activity and location history - to YouTube. Just like in those other two areas, you can set how long you want your history to be kept, though it isn't all that flexible. You can have it be deleted after three months, after 18 months, or keep it until you delete it manually.
Finally, in response to recent criticism over the fact that companies listen to what users are telling their digital assistants, Google is providing the option for users to delete their history using their voice. Users can say "Hey Google, delete the last thing I said to you", for example, or delete everything from the past week. The feature will turn on automatically, so there's no additional setup required.
Incognito mode in Maps and YouTube history auto-deletion are available now, but the Google Assistant features are arriving in the coming weeks.
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