the product

The banner

The banner is edited as four screens (Design, Words, Rules, Versions) around a live preview that shows the real runtime, not a mock-up. Publishing creates numbered, unchangeable versions; preview and production are two separate documents.

the editorHow the editor is arranged

One strip at the top holds the things that are true on every screen: which document you are editing (Preview draft or Production draft), the save state (drafts autosave), the lint pill, and the Publish button. Below it, four screens:

• Design: pick a starting design and customise it.
• Words: every text the banner shows, per language.
• Rules: categories, regions, Google Consent Mode and behaviour, each on its own screen.
• Versions: the ledger of everything ever published.

The live preview accompanies the screens where seeing helps (Design, Words, Categories) and steps aside where it cannot show anything (Regions, Consent Mode, Behaviour). It runs the actual banner runtime and simulates a visitor: pick a country, a rule set, desktop or phone, the first screen or the settings panel, even a Global Privacy Control signal. The controls change nothing; they are a simulation, and the preview says so.

designPresets, and making one yours

New sites start on Standard: a centred white dialog with three equal blue buttons (Accept all, Settings, Reject all), the shape most European visitors already know. Ten more built-in designs cover the range from quiet bars that inherit your page's own typeface to loud, deliberately unmissable notices, plus an in-page variant that covers nothing and a headless mode where you build the interface yourself on the runtime API.

Several of the built-ins come from a print-inspired design system: two ink colours on a paper stock, with the depth done by a solid offset second plate rather than shadows, and the consent record rendered as a receipt torn off the banner's edge. You do not need to understand any of that to use them; each preset card shows exactly what it looks like, and "Try it" previews a design without changing anything until you apply it.

Under "Customise this design" the full control set is always available: seven layouts (bar, sheet, modal, corner, ribbon, in page, headless), placement, colours with live contrast checking, type, radius, and custom CSS. Two rules hold in every design: Accept and Reject are identical objects, and a visitor can always get back in to change their mind.

Your pages: every banner links your imprint and your data protection notice in its footer. Both are required, and publishing is blocked until both are real URLs. That is deliberate: an EU consent banner without them is asking for trouble.

The banner footer carries a small "Made & Hosted in Europe by CookieCrumbs" line linking to cookiecrumbs.eu. Removing it is part of the paid plans; on the Free plan the line always ships, and publishing a configuration that hides it is blocked.

wordsTexts, grouped by where they appear

The Words screen lists every text in the order a visitor meets it, not in schema order: the first screen (title, body, the three buttons), the settings panel (save button, consent id label), and the small print around both (footer links, the reopen control, the language picker). Texts your current set-up does not use are collapsed into one line at the end; conditional texts appear exactly when a rule or behaviour makes them required, marked as such.

Focusing a field flips the preview to the screen that text lives on, in the language you are editing. So you always see what you are changing.

Languages

A banner can speak up to forty languages (the exact allowance depends on plan). Seven arrive fully translated: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese, wording and category descriptions included. Any other BCP 47 tag starts as a copy of your default language for you to translate. Each language chip shows how many texts are still empty; when translating, "Compare with English" puts the reference text under each field with a copy button. The visitor-facing language picker appears automatically when more than one language is set up, and can be turned off.

rulesCategories, regions, behaviour

Categories

Categories are the switches on your banner: Necessary, Analytics, Marketing and Preferences by default, plus any you add. Necessary is locked on. Each category carries its name and description per language, its Google Consent Mode signals, and whether it is on by default (under opt-in rules, only Necessary may be). Custom categories can be added here or directly on the Cookies & trackers page; both edit the same draft. Everything you change is visible immediately in the preview's settings panel, because the categories are that panel.

Regions

One question first: where are your visitors? Europe, Europe and the UK, or worldwide. The answer enables the right rule sets and the screen states the result in one honest sentence. Everything else (per-regime settings, consent expiry, country overrides, a forced regime for testing) sits under Advanced. The details of each regime are on Regions & regimes.

Consent Mode

If you run Google tags, the banner passes each decision to them. See Google Consent Mode.

Behaviour

What happens around the choice. Ask again after a material change (on by default): when a version is published as material, meaning new purposes or signals, visitors who already decided are asked again. Remember a refusal for one to thirteen months. Show the consent ID so visitors can quote it when exercising their rights. The reopen control is either a floating button or a link you place in your own footer; one of the two is required, because withdrawing consent must stay as easy as giving it. Closing the banner can be set to count as refusing; if you turn that on, the notice telling visitors so becomes required, and the strictest reading is always the default.

lintThe lint pill

The editor lints the draft continuously and the server lints it again at publish; the two can never drift apart because they run the same rules. Blocking findings (a missing imprint, a missing data protection notice, a category a service points at that no longer exists, a fallback regime that is disabled) stop publishing with a message in plain words and a link to the exact field. Warnings advise but do not block.

publishingVersions, and what each one achieved

Publishing creates an immutable numbered version, records who published it and from where, and writes an audit entry. The publish dialog asks for a short note and whether the change is material. Preview and production are published separately; promoting takes the current preview version live.

The Versions screen is a ledger, and it closes a loop most consent tools leave open: each version that served on production shows its opt-in rate, and the change against the version before it. A version that never reached production, or has too few decisions to report honestly, shows a dash and says why. Restore and promote are right on the row; nothing here is ever overwritten, so rolling back is safe by construction. Each published version also gets rendered screenshots (desktop and phone, both banner screens) and an automated accessibility check, kept with the version as evidence of what visitors saw.