Troubleshoot common issues

Something I hid is back

• You're on a different page. Rules are saved per page, not per site — the next article on the same site is a different page. See How pages are remembered.
• The site generates its class names fresh each build. Some sites use randomised classes that change when they deploy. A selector built from those stops matching. Re-hide the element; if it keeps happening, try clicking a slightly different part of it so the selector anchors on something more stable, like an id.
• The element loads in late. Content injected well after the page loads — some ads and consent banners do this — can appear briefly or persist. Re-running the picker on it usually catches the version that actually sticks.
• The site redesigned. If the page's markup changed, old selectors no longer match anything. Hide it again.

The picker won't start

• You're on a restricted page. Chrome blocks extensions from running on chrome:// pages, the Chrome Web Store, and other internal pages. Nothing happens there, by design.
• The tab predates the install. Tabs open before you installed or updated the extension may need a reload. The extension tries to inject itself on demand, but a refresh is the reliable fix.
• The keyboard shortcut is taken. Another extension may have claimed Alt+Shift+H. Check chrome://extensions/shortcuts — see Start the picker from the keyboard.
• The extension is disabled. Check it's switched on at chrome://extensions.

The wrong thing disappeared

Open the popup and remove that entry with its ×, then try again aiming slightly differently. The highlight always shows exactly what will go, so it's worth pausing on it before clicking.

If hiding one thing took a chunk of the page with it, that's the empty-container collapse doing its job a little too well — the element's parents had nothing else visible in them. Restore it and click a more specific piece inside the region instead.

There's a blank gap where something used to be

URLflows collapses containers that would be left visually empty, but a site can reserve space in ways that survive that — a fixed height on an ancestor, or a spacer element that genuinely holds nothing. Run the picker again and hide the leftover gap itself; it's an element like any other.

The page stopped working properly

Hiding something structural — a layout wrapper, or a container a script relies on — can break behaviour rather than just appearance. Press Restore all on this page in the popup to clear that page's rules and start again.

The popup list is empty

That means there are no rules for this exact address. Either you hid the element on a different page, or the URL has changed since. How pages are remembered covers what counts as the same page.

Still stuck?

Send us a note from the URLflows for Page Pruning help center — the Tell Us Something button at the bottom of the page reaches us directly.

Related guides

Revisit the basics in Hide elements on a page, or clear things out with Bring hidden elements back.