How to Block Cookie Banners
Learn what browsers and extensions can block annoying cookie banners.
If you are in the US, you do not need to be clicking on banners accepting GDPR compliant cookies. You can reject most cookies on the web that are not part of a logged in web application without causing any problems, other than marketers having less ways of tracking you.
Clicking banners and making choices each time you visit new websites gets annoying and slows down your train of though, breaking the flow you had when researching information. Here is a list of the browsers and browser extensions you can try to block cookie banners to get some browser time back.
Browsers:
- Brave has a Shields feature to block cookie consent notices in it's filter lists.
- Firefox can automatically reject cookie banners with Cookie Banner Reduction on many sites
- Opera has a build in ad blocker that has an option to block cookie dialogs.
- Vivaldi has a cookie crumbler that hides many cookie banners
- DuckDuckGo browser has cookie banner hiding that accepts the most private option in the banners.
Edge, Chrome, and Safari have no native cookie banner blockers so they will need an extension like those listed here.
Extensions:
- uBlock Origin has an Annoyances filter list that can hide banners in Chrome (with some limitations) and Firefox browsers
- I Don't Care About Cookies is an extension that hides or dismisses banners, though it was acquired by Avast so some no longer trust it, and there is a fork of it.
- Consent-O-Matic automatically filles in consent forms using your peferences, typically rejecting non-essential cookies.
- Ghostery includes a never-consent for cookie popups and tracking blockers.
- SuperAgent opts out of cookies automatically when possible.
Some of these blockers may cause sites to behave incorrectly, so if something is not working, like scrolling is broken, you may need to disable them temporarily if you really need that site.