Editorial note (2026): FLoC was a 2021 Chrome proposal. Google replaced the proposal with Topics in January 2022, so the Chrome Canary settings and steps below are obsolete and are retained only as historical documentation.
Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) drew considerable attention after the company announced the standard earlier in 2021. Major browser makers, including Firefox, Edge, Safari, Brave and Vivaldi, expressed no interest in Google's approach to FLoC, while WordPress announced that it would block FLoC on websites. Google later added an option that allowed users to opt out; the following steps show how FLoC could be disabled in Chrome at that time.
Disable FLoC in Google Chrome (2021)
To better understand FLoC and how it affected users, see our explainer about what Google FLoC was and why it could be blocked in the linked guide. In brief, FLoC grouped users with similar browsing habits into cohorts, and advertisers could serve targeted ads based on those groups. However, this could have enabled fingerprinting, and users could avoid it by following the steps below to opt out of FLoC.
Opt out of FLoC in Google Chrome on desktop
As first spotted by gHacks, Google added the option to disable FLoC (Privacy Sandbox) in Chrome Canary 93.0.4528.0, although it could be hidden behind a Chrome flag. When Chrome Canary 93.0.4530.1 was checked on a Windows computer, the toggle was present without any need to change Chrome flags. If the feature was not visible, this is how it could be enabled:
Open chrome://flags and search for “Privacy Settings 2”.
2. Then choose “Enabled” from the drop-down menu next to the flag and restart the browser. The flag could also be opened directly by entering the address below in Chrome's address bar.
chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2
After restarting the browser, open Chrome Settings and select the “Privacy and security” tab in the left sidebar. A new option named “Privacy Sandbox” would appear in the “Privacy and security” section. Privacy Sandbox could also be opened directly at the following address:
chrome://settings/privacySandbox
4. On the Privacy Sandbox page, two toggles would be displayed. Turn off both “Privacy Sandbox trials” and “FLoC”. Turning off only the Privacy Sandbox trials toggle would also disable FLoC automatically.
That was all. The user had opted out of Google's FLoC tracking system and would not be included in an advertiser cohort.
Opt out of FLoC in Google Chrome on mobile
1. Open Chrome on the smartphone and go to Settings. From the Settings page, open the “Privacy and security” section.
2. Tap “Privacy Sandbox” on the “Privacy and security” page. Then turn off the “Privacy Sandbox trials” toggle on the next page. This opted the user out of Chrome's Privacy Sandbox trials and disabled Google FLoC in the process.
Disable Google's Privacy Sandbox trials in Chrome
This was how FLoC could be disabled in Google Chrome at the time. For more tips of this type, see our article about Chrome settings worth changing. You could also consider switching to a privacy-friendly browser from our article about the best browsers for privacy, or reviewing one of the best alternatives to Google Chrome.
The article “How to Disable FLoC in Google Chrome” first appeared in Web News.
