How to unlink Google/YouTube w/o signing out?

February 9, 2013 10:31 PM

How can I stay signed in to my Google account (just using one browser) but not have my login automatically show up when I'm browsing videos on YouTube (bonus points if it doesn't track embedded video watching)?

I want my YouTube browsing experience to be completely free of my Google login information.

I'm using Firefox with a lot of privacy extensions: NoScript, RequestPolicy, Adblock, etc.

Can I use one of these Addons (or something else?) to make my YouTube page show up like I'm not logged into my Google accounts, but stay logged into Google?

Thanks!

posted by apip to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

You should be able to do your YouTube surfing in private/incognito mode. My experience is with Chrome, where going to YouTube in a separate tab would be easy.
posted by andoatnp at 10:51 PM on February 9, 2013

Maybe I spoke too soon. It's possible with Firefox that it's all or nothing, whereas Chrome lets some windows use your cookies/logins while others are in incognito mode.

Any interest in checking out Chrome?
posted by andoatnp at 10:54 PM on February 9, 2013

Response by poster: I'd like to stick with Firefox and not have to switch in/out of Ingocnito.
posted by apip at 11:37 PM on February 9, 2013

Try DoNotTrackMe? Logging into gmail doesn't automatically log me into youtube, even without bothering going incognito. (I also use chrome, though, so it could be that's just a feature of chrome, and not actually related to the extension. Still worth giving a shot.)
posted by tan_coul at 11:54 PM on February 9, 2013

You could upgrade to Firefox Nightly; they recently pushed a change that came with chromeish private browsing windows.
posted by wayland at 3:59 AM on February 10, 2013

Go to Firefox preferences, "Privacy" tab. Next to "Accept cookies from sites" click the "Exceptions.." button. A dialog will open. Under "Address of website:" Type "youtube.com" (without the quotes) and click "Block". Then type "youtube.*" and click "Block" - and finally "*.youtube.com" and click Block.
posted by helios at 4:17 AM on February 10, 2013

There is some dual login mode that you can use with Google/YT. I am logged into my main account on Google, but my "special YT" one on YT. You have to somehow link the two so obviously Google will know they're the same person, but your main account's history will be clean.
posted by ClarissaWAM at 5:09 AM on February 10, 2013

I've switched using Chrome for email/work and firefox for goof-off browsing. But in the past I was using the add-on Multifox v2 to accomplish what you want in Firefox alone. It also allows for simultaneous logging in to multiple google accounts across firefox tabs without having to link the accounts.
posted by neda at 11:26 AM on February 10, 2013