Titles carry names and numbers
A CRM tab is titled with the customer on the other end of it. A ticket tab carries the ticket number and its subject line. A doc tab says “Q3 comp review”. Nobody has to open anything: the strip already said it.
Tab Privacy
Hide your tab titles and favicons when you share your screen
Chrome has no setting for this. Blurr rewrites what your tab strip says, so a window share, a recording, or someone glancing over at your screen never turns your open tabs into a list of your customers, tickets and half-finished projects.
- Masks titles, blanks favicons
- A switch per tab, and one for all
- Seventeen ways to disguise a tab
Updated August 2026
Quick answer
Share a single Chrome tab if you can: it is free, built in, and never shows the tab strip at all. When you have to share the whole window or the whole screen, turn on Blurr’s Tab Privacy. Every hidden tab title becomes a run of at most ten characters, in one of seventeen disguises, and its favicon goes blank. Two independent switches, “Hide this tab” and “Hide all tabs”, let you mask everything except the one tab you are actually presenting. Free covers three activations; after that it is Premium, and switching it back off is always free.
The risk
Your tab strip is a list of everywhere you have been
You rehearse the page you are presenting. Nobody rehearses the two centimetres above it, and that is the part with the customer names in it. A screen share, a recorded walkthrough, a photo of your monitor in a team channel: all of them publish the strip along with everything else.
Favicons survive the squeeze
Chrome shrinks titles to nothing as tabs pile up, but the icon never shrinks. A job board, a competitor, a payroll tool: all of them are recognisable at sixteen pixels, with the title long gone.
Even the count says something
Forty tabs on one project reads differently from four. A second copy of the deck you are presenting says there is another version. The shape of the strip is information whether you meant it or not.
Reference
The four things people try, and what each costs
Three of these are free and one of them is genuinely the right answer most of the time. Worth knowing which, before you install anything.
Swipe the table sideways to read every column.
| Approach | What it hides | What it costs you | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close every tab first | Whatever you closed | You lose your working set right before you need it, and rebuild it afterwards. Open one mid-call because a question came up and its real title is straight back in the strip. | Expensive |
| Full screen (F11) | The tab strip, address bar and bookmarks, while it lasts | It hides them from you too, and it survives exactly until you switch tabs. Presentation mode in a meeting app can drop you out of it, and one Escape puts everything back on screen. | Fragile |
| A second profile or a Guest window | Every tab in your real profile | A clean browser: sign in again everywhere, no extensions, no history, no saved sessions. It also has to be set up before the call, not during it, and one wrong window picked in the share dialog undoes the whole thing. | Solid, slow |
| Share one tab, not the window | The tab strip, address bar, bookmarks, toasts and every other window | Nothing at all. It is free, built into Chrome, Zoom, Meet and Teams, and it is the right first move every time. It runs out when you have to demo two tabs, an app outside the browser, or the whole desktop. | Do this first |
Share one tab whenever the job allows it. This page is for the rest of the time: the window share, the desktop share, the demo that spans two tabs, the recording, and the colleague reading your screen over your shoulder.
The fix
Mask the titles instead
Tab Privacy leaves your tabs exactly where they are and changes what they say. Each hidden title becomes a run of at most ten characters, roughly tracking the width of the real one without revealing it, and the favicon beside it goes blank.
“Hide all tabs” on, “Hide this tab” off. The whole strip is masked except the deck you are presenting. The extension names the state back to you in plain words, so you always know what your audience can read: “All tabs hidden, except this one”.
Two switches, not one selector
“Hide this tab” and “Hide all tabs” are independent on purpose. A tab with no setting of its own follows the global one, so switching “Hide all tabs” on lights up this tab’s switch too. Turn that one back off and you get the state a single Off / This / All selector cannot express: every tab masked except the one you are presenting.
Masked before the title arrives
The mask runs at document start, the first moment a page can be touched, so a tab you navigate mid-call is masked before its own title and icon finish parsing. The favicon blanks in about ten milliseconds. There is no window where the real name sits in the strip waiting for an extension to catch up.
Nothing to clean up after
Blurr keeps each page’s real title on the document it came from and puts it back when you switch masking off, so you are not left with a strip full of asterisks trying to remember what was where. Turning it off is instant, and it is free.
Three free activations, then Premium
Switching masking on when nothing is hidden yet spends one of three free tries, and the extension counts them down in the open so zero is never a surprise. Hiding more tabs while it is on, revealing one, changing the disguise and switching everything off again all cost nothing. Premium drops the counter.
Seventeen ways to disguise a hidden tab
Asterisks are the default and they are also a little loud: a strip of them announces that something is being hidden. The shaded runs read as a blur, and the decoys read as an ordinary tab nobody looks at twice. Picking one is free on every plan.
- Asterisks **********
- Dots ••••••••••
- Blur ░▒▓█▓▒░▒▓█
- Blocks ██████████
- Frosted ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
- Mosaic ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
- Soft blur ░░░░░░░░░░
- Static ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿
- Bars ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
- Squares ■■■■■■■■■■
- Circles ●●●●●●●●●●
- Sparkle ✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦
- Braille ⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿
- Blank nothing at all
- “New Tab” New Tab
- Untitled Untitled
- Custom text whatever you type
Step by step
Hide your tab titles in five steps
Under a minute, once. The on-page toolbar opens with Ctrl + Shift + YCmd + Shift + Y (Cmd + Shift + Y on Mac), and the Blurr popup with Ctrl + Shift + BCmd + Shift + B (Cmd + Shift + B on Mac).
- 1
Open the tabs you will actually need
Get your working set open before the call rather than during it. Masking covers whatever is there, and with “Hide all tabs” on, a tab you open later is masked from the moment it appears.
- 2
Open Blurr and find the eye icon
Press Ctrl + Shift + Y (Cmd + Shift + Y on Mac) for the on-page toolbar and click the crossed-out eye, or open the Blurr popup from the toolbar icon. Both surfaces carry the same block, “Hide tab icons & titles”, with the same two switches.
- 3
Switch on “Hide all tabs” first
Every tab title becomes a run of at most ten characters and every favicon goes blank, across every window in that Chrome profile. Do this one first: flipping the global switch clears any per-tab exceptions you had set.
- 4
Switch off “Hide this tab” for the one you are presenting
The two switches are independent, so turning this one off leaves the strip masked with exactly one readable tab: the one your audience is meant to be looking at. The status line reads “All tabs hidden, except this one”.
- 5
Pick a disguise, if asterisks look too deliberate
In Preferences, the “Hidden tab title” row changes what a hidden tab is called: shaded blocks, braille, a tiled blur pattern, blank, a decoy that simply reads “New Tab”, or your own words. Every masked tab re-titles itself with no reload, and this part is free for everyone.
Know the edges
What tab masking does not hide
A privacy tool that oversells its reach is worse than none, because you stop checking. Tab Privacy covers the strip. Here is everything it deliberately leaves alone, and what to do about each one.
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The content of the page itself. Tab Privacy rewrites what the strip says, nothing more. To hide what is inside the page, draw a box or click an element to blur it.
-
The address bar of the tab you are on. That is browser chrome, not a web page, so no extension can paint over it. Share a single tab if the URL is the sensitive part.
-
How many tabs are open. Masking changes what each one says, not the shape of the strip, so a wall of forty tabs still reads as a wall of forty tabs.
-
Chrome’s own pages. A tab sitting on chrome://settings, the Web Store, or an extension page is off limits to every extension by design, so its title stays exactly as it is.
-
Your taskbar, dock, notification toasts and every other application. Nothing that runs inside a browser can reach those. Close them, or turn on your operating system’s focus mode.
Keep exploring
Blur the page, not just the strip above it
Masking your tabs is the frame. The same extension hides what is inside the page you are actually showing.
FAQ
Tab titles, answered
How do I hide my tab titles when I share my screen in Chrome?
Chrome has no setting for it. Share a single tab instead of your whole window whenever you can, because a tab share never shows the strip at all. When you have to share the window or the full screen, use an extension that masks the titles in place: Blurr’s Tab Privacy replaces each hidden tab title with a run of at most ten characters and blanks its favicon, across every window in that Chrome profile.
Can I hide every tab except the one I am presenting?
Yes, and that is the reason there are two switches instead of one selector. Turn “Hide all tabs” on first, then turn “Hide this tab” off for the tab you are showing. The per-tab switch overrides the global one in both directions, so the strip stays masked with exactly one readable tab. Set the global switch first: flipping it resets the per-tab exceptions.
Is hiding tab titles free?
You get three free activations, then it is Premium. One activation is one flip from nothing hidden to something hidden. Hiding more tabs while masking is already on, revealing one, changing the disguise style and switching masking off again are all free and never counted, and the extension shows how many tries are left rather than surprising you at zero. Premium removes the counter, from $5 a month, $29 a year, or $39 once.
Will a tab that loads mid-call flash its real title first?
No. The mask runs at document start, before the page’s own title and icon have finished parsing, so a tab you navigate or reload while sharing is masked from its first frame in the strip. The favicon blanks in about ten milliseconds. Turning masking off restores each page’s real title, because Blurr keeps the original on the document rather than throwing it away.
Do my real tab titles come back when I turn it off?
Yes, immediately, and switching off is always free. Blurr stashes each page’s real title on its own document while the mask is showing and restores it the moment masking goes off, so nothing is renamed permanently and no tab is left as a row of asterisks. Only the global “hide all tabs” preference persists across restarts; per-tab exceptions live with the tabs themselves.