Cookie banner not showing: check the storage

Owners almost never see a missing banner, because their browser already holds the choice. The consent tool stores the answer the first time someone responds, and it stays hidden on every later visit. The tool's script may also be blocked by an ad blocker or by a server rule, so no banner code runs at all. On a phone, a notice pinned to the bottom can sit below the browser toolbar, loaded and invisible. A visitor who has never chosen sees a page with no notice, and the owner cannot notice this from their own browser.

• Open the storage panel and look for a saved consent cookie or key. Delete it, then reload the page.
• Open the Console on load. Is the consent script blocked, or refused by a server rule?
• Find the banner in the Elements panel. Is it present but off screen, behind another layer, or hidden?
• Load the page on a phone. Is the notice under the browser toolbar or below the bottom edge?
• Check the banner's region setting. A notice limited to some places will not show anywhere else.

The consent tool keeps the answer in a cookie or in browser storage, so a visitor who answered once never sees the notice again. Owners are in that group almost every time they load the page, which is why the problem goes unnoticed. Open the storage panel in the developer tools and look for a key that names consent, or a cookie from the consent tool's domain. Delete it and reload. If the notice returns, the saved choice was the reason it was hidden. A new private window is a quicker way to reach a first-time state, because it starts with no saved values.

The notice is usually one script from a consent tool, and that script can fail without any error on the page. An ad blocker or a privacy extension can stop the request to the tool's domain. A Content-Security-Policy header on the server can refuse a script from a domain it does not list. Open the Console on load and read the messages for words such as blocked or refused. If the script never runs, no notice exists in the page at all, so the fix is in the script's address or the server rule, not in the banner's styling.

Sometimes the banner is in the page and still invisible. A fixed notice can sit under a full-width element with a higher stacking order, so the tap and the sight both go to the element above it. On a phone, a notice pinned to the bottom can sit under the browser's toolbar. Select the banner in the Elements panel, read its position and size, and compare them with the phone screen. A simulated visitor on a phone browser shows what sits on screen at load, in a screenshot.

Landing page testing

Some consent setups show the notice only to visitors from certain places. Write down which places the consent tool targets, and check the notice on a first visit from your own connection before you call it fixed. One check shows one place. It does not show what a visitor in a place the tool does not target sees, or the notice for each region the tool lists. Whether the notice meets the rules where your visitors live is a legal question, and a banner that appears in a test does not answer it.

A consent tool update, a new tag manager container or a server rule change can hide the notice again without touching the banner itself. Rerun the same simulated visitor on a phone and a laptop after each change. If the site sits behind a login, test with a test account, and check each preview deploy before the change goes live.