How to Allow Pop-Ups on a Mac

Pop-ups have historically been an annoying reality of using the internet—plenty of pop-ups are disruptive at best and dangerous at worst. In some cases, though, you may need to allow pop-ups for optimal browsing. Pop-ups can be essential for actions like logging in, signing up for email lists and newsletters, and engaging with other site-specific functions.

Allowing pop-ups on your Mac requires you to select settings in your specific browser. (You’ll also need to make sure you’ve disabled any third-party ad blocking apps or adjust their settings to allow pop-ups for specific sites.)

How to allow pop-ups in Safari

To turn on pop-ups in Safari, click Safari in your menu bar and go to Preferences > Websites. Select Pop-up Windows from the left menu. You’ll see the tabs you currently have open and can select Allow from the drop-down menu to permit pop-ups on a specific site.

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You can also select Allow from the drop-down next to When visiting other websites to enable this setting globally.

How to allow pop-ups in Chrome

To enable pop-ups in Google Chrome, select Chrome in your menu bar and click Preferences. In the Settings tab that opens, select Privacy and security from the left menu and click Site settings. Scroll to and select Pop-ups and redirects. You can select allowing or blocking pop-ups as the global default, or you can add a specific site to your pop-ups list. To do this, click the Add button and enter the web address.

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You can also change the pop-up settings as you browse. If you see a Pop-Up Blocked icon and message in your address bar, you can click on it and update the settings for that specific site.

How to allow pop-ups in Firefox

To allow pop-ups in Firefox, choose Firefox > Preferences in your menu bar. Go to Privacy & Security, scroll to Permissions, and uncheck the box next to Block pop-up windows. This will allow pop-ups across the board, but you can also leave this setting selected and add specific websites to the exceptions list (click the Exceptions button, copy/paste the web address into the pop-up window, and hit Save Changes).

Credit: Emily Long