Automatic Cookie Banner and Popup Removal

Cookie banners can get in the way when you're capturing screenshots. We've added automatic cookie banner removal to help you get cleaner captures.

The Problem

Many websites display cookie consent banners that can cover important content. When you're capturing multiple websites, manually handling each banner takes extra time and effort.

How It Works

When you capture a website, Shotomatic attempts to detect and remove cookie banners using several methods. If one approach works well for a particular site, it remembers that for faster processing next time.

The system typically processes banners within 2 seconds. It can handle various types of consent dialogs, from simple notification bars to consent management platforms like OneTrust and Cookiebot. It also attempts to handle consent walls that block content access.

The system includes support for consent dialogs in multiple languages, particularly common European languages where GDPR compliance is required.

Configuration Options

You can choose how to handle cookie banners based on your needs:

Block & Reject (default) attempts to remove banners and reject tracking cookies when possible. You can also choose to accept minimal cookies, hide banners visually without interaction, or leave them as-is.

Testing Results

In our testing across various websites including news sites (The Guardian, Le Monde), e-commerce platforms (Amazon, Booking.com), and developer sites (Stack Overflow, GitHub), the system successfully handled cookie banners on most sites. Success rates vary depending on the specific implementation of each site's consent system.

This helps when creating documentation, capturing bug reports, or collecting website screenshots for presentations, as you're less likely to have consent dialogs in your captures.

Technical Details

The system uses a multi-layer approach: it first checks if a page likely has a banner before processing. It combines filter lists (like EasyList Cookie), pattern detection, and script blocking to handle different types of consent implementations. Successfully used strategies are cached per domain to improve performance on repeat captures.

Getting Started

The automatic banner removal feature is available in the Website Crawler. Enter your URLs, select your preferred cookie handling option, and capture your screenshots.

This feature can reduce the need for manual cleanup in image editors when cookie banners would otherwise appear in your captures.

Update to the latest version of Shotomatic (1.3.6) to use this feature.

Help Us Improve

If you encounter a website where the automatic banner blocking doesn't work as expected, please let us know at support@shotomatic.com. Include the website URL and we'll work on improving support for that site.