Google Chrome team is experimenting with a new feature which allows users to password-protect their browser profiles on Windows, Linux and Mac. This would help users to secure their browsing data (bookmarks, history, extensions and most importantly, the saved passwords) by blocking the unauthorized access.

Currently, anyone who gets access to your computer can launch Chrome and checkout your browsing data. As Chrome has no “Master Password” setting like Firefox, he/she can also see all your saved passwords with just few clicks. Hopefully, the above upcoming feature would fix this serious issue.

To try out this profile lock feature, enable the Chrome flag New profile management system (type chrome://flags/#enable-new-profile-management in the address bar and hit the enter key), and restart your browser. Now, you should notice a new menu as shown in the following screenshot. One can simply lock his profile by clicking on the lock icon.

Once your profile is locked, you would need to sign-in again to continue using Chrome. There is also the Guest Mode, and the option to add more accounts. The entire UI resembles to the user management UI of Chrome OS.

This feature is still under development, and we hope see it enabled by default in coming versions of Chrome.

(via LifeHacker)