How to Allow Pop-Ups on Your PC

Users typically want their browsers to block pop-ups, but there are times when pop-ups are strictly necessary. Sometimes, web-based forms will try to open a dialog box that your browser will view as a threat and kill off before it gets to you. In cases like this, the only way to complete the task at hand is to dig into the settings and disable pop-up blocking. Here's how to allow pop-ups on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Microsoft Edge.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can disable your pop-up blocker there, too.

Why Allow Pop-Ups?

It might seem like there's no reason to ever want pop-ups, but there are definitely times when you need them to be active. Some websites surface their login dialog boxes using a pop-up. Others use pop-ups as components for web-based forms or survey pages, but often the form can’t be properly completed if these pop-ups aren’t allowed to emerge.

For all of these, allowing all pop-ups is the best way to ensure the correct pop-up dialog boxes appear so you can accomplish whatever you're there to do.

How to Test Pop-up Blocking

There are a number of websites dedicated purely to testing your browser’s handling of various kinds of pop-up dialog boxes.

Since we’re trying to ensure they do appear, you can use the simplest version of this test, which is to see if a small separate browser window with no address bar appears.

You can select any pop-up test website you prefer, but for the purposes of this walkthrough, we’ll use PopupTest's first test: "Multi-PopUp Test."

How to Enable Pop-Ups in Chrome

Here's how to enable pop-ups in the Chrome browser.

Open Chrome and select the three vertically aligned dots in the upper right corner. Then select Settings.
Scroll down and select Advanced at the bottom.
Select Privacy and security in the left panel followed by Site settings in the main window.
Select Pop-ups and redirects in the Contents section.
Select the Blocked (recommended) toggle and switch it to “Allowed.”

How to Enable Pop-Ups in Opera

Opera, being a fork of the same underlying browser that Chrome is, has a similar settings structure to Chrome.

Select the menu icon at the top of the Opera browser.
Scroll down in the menu and select Go to browser settings.
Scroll down and select Advanced at the bottom of the screen Settings screen.
Select Site settings.
Scroll down and select Pop-ups and redirects.
Select the Allowed toggle to turn it off.

How to Allow Pop-Ups in Microsoft Edge

Select the three horizontal dots icon and choose Settings in the menu that opens.
Select Privacy & security.
Scroll down and select the Block pop-ups toggle to disable it.

How to Allow Pop-Ups on Internet Explorer

Open Internet Explorer and select the Settings cog at the top of the screen.
Select the Privacy tab in Internet options dialog box.
Select Turn on Pop-up Blocker to uncheck it and disable it.