How to turn off pop up blocker, and when to allow one site instead

The question to answer before you touch the switch

Almost everybody who looks this up has been sent by a website. A bank, a booking form, a payroll system or a course portal has put a line on the screen saying the pop-up blocker must be turned off, and the search that follows asks for exactly that. It is worth a moment, because the browsers themselves treat that request as narrower than it sounds.

Google puts it in one line on its own help page: “Not all pop-ups are ads or spam. Some legitimate websites display web content in pop-up windows.” Microsoft gives the example everyone recognises — some pop-ups “can be helpful, such as when a bank website displays your monthly statement in a pop-up window”. Mozilla states the cost of the blunt answer plainly: “Some websites, including some banking sites, use pop-ups for important features. Blocking all pop-ups disables such features. To allow specific websites to use pop-ups, while still blocking all others, you can add those specific websites to the list of allowed sites.”

However it gets typed — how to turn off pop up blocker, how to disable pop up blocker, how to remove pop up blocker, or how to turn off pop up blocker in chrome — it is one setting and one switch. The other half of the family asks for the other setting without knowing it: how do i allow pop ups in chrome and how to enable pop ups in chrome are the exception, not the switch.

So there are two settings, not one, and they are one line apart on the same screen. The switch turns the blocker off for every site you will ever visit, including the ones you have not visited yet. The exception opens the door for one address. If you can name the site that needs it — and you almost always can, because a site just told you — the exception is the setting you want, and this page gives both.

Turning the pop-up blocker off, browser by browser

Chrome on a computer. Open the menu at the top right, then Settings, then Privacy and security, then Site Settings, then Pop-ups and redirects. Choose the option you want as the default. That is the whole-web switch.

Chrome on an iPhone or iPad. Open the Chrome app, tap More and then Settings, then Content Settings, then Block Pop-ups, and turn it off. On an Android phone Google’s own steps are to open Chrome, tap More and then Settings, then “tap Site settings” and “Pop-ups and redirects”, and “turn off Pop-ups and redirects”. For a single site, Google’s Android wording is shorter still: go to the page where the pop-up was blocked, and “at the bottom, tap Always show”.

Edge. Settings and more at the top of the browser, then Settings, then Privacy, search, and services, then Site permissions, then All permissions, then Pop-ups and redirects. The toggle Microsoft labels “Blocked (recommended)” is the blocker; turning it off is turning the blocker off.

Firefox. Mozilla’s own steps: select Permissions and data on the left, go down to the Permissions section, and “uncheck the box next to Block pop-ups and third-party redirects to disable the pop-up blocker altogether”. The name of that box is the caveat the other three do not have: one checkbox governs pop-ups and third-party redirects together, and Mozilla says so — “these settings are linked and must be toggled together”. Older versions of Firefox call the panel Privacy & Security and the box Block pop-up windows, and Mozilla still shows those names on the same page to anyone running one, which is why instructions written a year ago do not match the screen. Turning off the pop-up blocker in Firefox turns off slightly more than the name suggests.

Safari on a Mac. Safari menu, then Settings, then the Websites tab, where Apple says you “can configure options to allow or block some or all pop-ups”. On an iPhone or iPad it is not in Safari at all: it is in the phone’s Settings app. Apple’s wording is “Open Settings, tap Apps, then tap Safari. Turn Block Pop-ups on or off.” This is the route people miss most often, because it is the one place where the setting is not inside the browser.

Letting one site through instead, which is usually what was needed

Three of the four browsers document a route that takes about the same number of clicks as the switch and leaves the rest of the web protected.

Chrome makes it a two-click job from the page itself, which is the easiest of the four: go to the page where the pop-up was blocked, click Pop-up blocked in the address bar, and choose “Always allow pop-ups and redirects from [site]”. On a phone the same thing is a tap on Always show at the bottom of the screen. If you would rather type the address in by hand, the site settings screen takes one, and Google documents a wildcard for covering a whole domain: “To capture all pop-ups across the site, use the pattern [*.]example.com”.

Edge keeps it on the settings screen. Under Pop-ups and redirects, go to “Allowed to send pop-ups and use redirects”, choose Add site, and type the address “starting with the https:// portion at the beginning”. Microsoft’s own words for why the entry exists: “Sometimes it is necessary to allow pop-ups so that a particular web application or website experience will work as expected.”

Firefox puts a Manage exceptions button underneath the checkbox. Click it, paste the address, click Allow, then Save Changes. The same dialog is where you take a permission away again later, which is worth knowing if you granted one to a site you no longer trust.

Safari on a Mac has per-site control in the Websites tab. Safari on an iPhone does not, and this is the one real gap among the four: the only control Apple documents for the phone is the single Block Pop-ups switch, with no list of allowed sites. On an iPhone, if one site needs a pop-up, the documented options are to turn the blocker off, do the thing, and turn it back on — or to open that site in a browser that has exceptions.

When you turned it off and nothing changed

This is common enough that Google puts it at the top of its own page rather than the bottom, and the reason is almost always that the thing on your screen was never a pop-up. Three different things arrive and people call all three by the same name.

A site notification is a permission you granted once, usually by clicking Allow on a box that appeared a second after a page loaded. It has nothing to do with the pop-up blocker and the switch does not touch it. Google’s wording: “You may have previously subscribed to receive notifications from a site. You can block notifications if you don’t want any communications from a site to show up on your screen.” The fix is in site permissions, next to the pop-up setting rather than in it.

An advert drawn inside the page is part of the page, in the same way the text is. No pop-up blocker in any browser removes it, and Microsoft says as much when it lists what its own blocker cannot reach.

Software on the machine is the third, and both Google and Apple name it. Google lists it among the reasons pop-ups continue: “Your computer or phone may be infected by malware.” Apple is more specific about the Mac: if you see pop-ups “that just won’t go away”, you “might have unintentionally downloaded and installed adware (advertising-supported software) or other unwanted software”. If that is the shape of the problem, the pop-up setting is not where the work is — stopping pop-up ads is the page for the blocker seen from the other side, and removing malware from a computer is the page for the machine itself.

One more possibility has nothing to do with any of this: on a work or school computer the setting may not be yours to change. Google states it directly — “You can’t change this setting yourself, but your network administrator can set up the pop-up blocker for you.”