Debug mode

Last updated 8 October 2026

Debug mode prints the banner's checks to your browser's developer console: whether the page's domain matches the one registered for the site, the Google Consent Mode signals the banner sends, and, about 1.5 seconds after the page loads, a Consent Mode report. Use it when the banner doesn't appear, or to see what the banner told Google.

How to activate

Add ?kukie_debug=1 to the address of any page on your site:

https://example.com/?kukie_debug=1
https://example.com/products?kukie_debug=1

If the address already has a query string, add &kukie_debug=1 to the end of it instead. Then open your browser's developer tools (F12, or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac; Safari needs its developer features turned on in its Advanced settings first), switch to the Console tab and reload the page. Debug mode's messages start with [Kukie], and the Consent Mode report is grouped under [Kukie] Consent Mode Debug Report.

What debug mode shows

The domain check: the domain registered for the site, the page's hostname and whether they match, for example [Kukie] Domain check: registered="example.com" current="example.com" match=true. The next line shows the page path, which the check ignores.
Google Consent Mode signals: setGcmDefaults() called with the default consent state the banner set when it started, and updateGcm() called with the categories the visitor accepted and the state sent to Google. If Google Consent Mode v2 is off for the site, both lines say they were skipped.
The Consent Mode report: about 1.5 seconds after the page loads, a report on the Google tags on the page, whether the consent default came before them, and the consent state Google holds. Consent Mode debug mode explains how to read it.
Warnings: one when the visitor's region couldn't be looked up and the banner applied the site's strictest region rule instead, and one when a visitor's choice is too large for the consent cookie to keep each service's setting.

Troubleshooting with debug mode

Turn on debug mode, reload the page and look for these lines:

Domain mismatch - banner will not render: the page's hostname is not the domain the site was added with. Compare the two values in the domain check line. The banner runs only on that hostname, so a staging host or another subdomain needs a site of its own.
Banner disabled via settings: the banner is switched off. Turn on Banner display status in Site Settings > Banner.
No [Kukie] lines at all: first check that the address still ends in kukie_debug=1 after the page loads, because a redirect can drop it. If it does, the banner script did not run on this page: check that the page carries your site's embed code, as How to verify your banner installation describes.

Two settings hide the banner on purpose, and debug mode prints no line saying so: the domain check and Consent Mode lines still appear. A region rule with the Hidden consent model (Banner Editor > Regions) never shows a banner to visitors in that region. A URL pattern under Disabled Pages (Banner Editor > Behaviour) hides the banner on matching pages while script blocking and stored consent keep working.

www. and the bare domain

Kukie.io treats www.example.com and example.com as the same domain: it removes the www. prefix from both before comparing them. The domain check line shows the values after that step.

Tip: Debug mode is on only for a page whose address carries kukie_debug=1, and only in the browser that loaded it. It changes nothing for your visitors. Remove the parameter when you have finished.