You searched Chrome's settings for a profile lock and found nothing. That is not your mistake — the feature genuinely does not exist. Here is the honest explanation, and the short list of things that do work.
This page exists to save you from fake tutorials. There is no hidden Chrome setting that locks a profile with a password. Once that is settled, everything else becomes clear: you add the lock with an extension, or you lock the Windows account under the browser. Both are covered in this set — but neither starts inside a Chrome menu that does not exist.
Almost every other app on your phone has an app lock, so it feels obvious that Chrome should have one. People open Settings, search for lock or password, find only the Google Account and saved-password sections, and assume they missed a hidden menu. You did not miss anything. The feature is not there.
Part of the confusion is old memory. Years ago Chrome experimented with locking a profile inside its supervised-users feature, and Google removed that whole system long back. Articles copied from that era still float around the internet describing menus that no longer exist in any current Chrome.
When someone says Chrome password, they usually mean one of these three very different things:
Chrome's own answer to shared computers is the profile system plus Guest mode. Profiles keep each person's bookmarks, history and logins in a separate container — good organisation, zero security between people who share one Windows login. Guest mode is a temporary window that keeps nothing after it closes, which is the right tool for a visitor.
So the honest menu of options is short: an extension lock for casual privacy (the video's method), separate Windows accounts for real protection, or both. Every later page in this set takes one of those options and grades it properly. Anyone selling you a secret Chrome setting for this is selling you a setting that does not exist.
The full profile lock setup on screen — extension install, password set and the live test.
▶️ Watch Full VideoGoogle's design assumes the operating system account is the security boundary — one person, one Windows or phone user account, and Chrome data lives inside it. That is why Chrome invests in profiles for separation and leaves locking to the device account.
In current Chrome there is no such option; those videos are either very old (from the removed supervised-users era), showing an extension's own settings page, or showing a different browser. If a Lock screen appears when Chrome opens, an extension is providing it.
No. Signing out stops sync and removes account-level access, but the local profile — history, cookies and any locally stored data — remains openable by anyone using that Windows session. Sign out and remove the profile if the PC is not yours.