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The other day, I logged in to a Google account with the YouTube app on iOS. Later, while doing a Google search, I noticed the Google account's profile in the corner, despite me never signing in to this or any Google account on Safari. I deleted all of my Safari's history and it didn't appear to sign me in again, so I re-downloaded the YouTube app and signed in again. Sure enough, Safari somehow recorded those details and signed me in to Google again. As Apple has positioned itself as the "pro-privacy" company, I find it very concerning that they are just automatically signing me into Google, despite me very much not wanting that.

I could not find anything about automatically signing me in to website in Safari, I have auto-fill off and most of the privacy settings enabled. How is this happening, and how can I disable it?

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    Related / likely duplicate: Stop Google Account Being Shared Between Apps on iPhone
    – Ian Campbell
    Commented Oct 23, 2022 at 14:58
  • Same happens on chrome desktop. Not logged in to Google, navigate to YouTube, log in to YouTube, you're automatically logged into Google and Chrome too.
    – user68964
    Commented Oct 23, 2022 at 21:53
  • @IanCampbell that's interesting, but the answer seems to indicate that using a web browser would alleviate the issue, even if the IPs are the same (considering IP addresses are not unique per device), as I won't be signed-in automatically (though, as in my question, this is clearly not the case). And the developer feature seems to connect apps between the same app, which I can understand, but I don't see how this would connect to safari as well, as that's made my Apple. I could see if my Apple ID was logged in to Safari, but this is very much not the case.
    – At0micMutex
    Commented Oct 24, 2022 at 17:15
  • @68964 this is why I use Firefox multi-account containers on desktop. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to exist on iOS, but I never logged in to the YouTube website, only the YouTube app, so I still don't understand how Google on safari could know about that, unless iOS is somehow copying the username and password I use and logs me in to the web version.
    – At0micMutex
    Commented Oct 24, 2022 at 17:20

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YouTube is owned by Google. When you use a Google app, Google records that information. When you then use a Google web page (e.g. the search engine), the Google code in the web page makes the connection. This is not much to do with Apple - you would see the same thing if you used Chrome as your browser. The purpose is for Google to build a picture of you and target you with adverts.

I don't think you will get far with just privacy settings in Safari. But I can suggest some steps you can take to reduce your exposure to Google tracking. I can suggest:

  • Don't use Google and YouTube - which you likely don't want to do!
  • For web searches use a privacy focused search engine. Two examples:
  • Use an 'ad-blocker' which has strong anti-tracking. I use AdGuard for Mac.
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  • Definitely if you don't like to be tracked, don't use Google.
    – Florian F
    Commented Oct 23, 2022 at 19:39
  • I still don't understand how google could know it was still "me". As far as I know, apps are supposed to be sandboxed, so I don't understand how Google would be able to track me into Safari through the YouTube app. And I don't use Google often, I typically use DuckDuckGo, and I do have a pihole and an adblocker installer.
    – At0micMutex
    Commented Oct 24, 2022 at 17:08

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