Guide

How to use the CookieChest extension

Three free tools in one popup — Health Checks, Tag Activity, and Cookie Report — plus how the credit-gated proof downloads work.

Health Checks

Click Run checks to confirm your GTM container, CMP, GA4, and Consent Mode v2 are actually working on the page you're on, not just installed. Results accumulate per hostname as you check more pages, so a "sitewide" view builds up automatically, it only ever covers pages you've actually opened the extension on. Download proof report turns that into a branded PDF or a CSV you can hand to a client.

Tag Activity

A live feed of every tag firing on the page, matched to a known vendor. Two things worth knowing: two different GTM containers (or GA4 properties) show their own ID inline and their own colour, so they never blend into one row; and each hit is flagged client-side (a direct call to a known third-party domain, blockable) or server-side (proxied through your own domain, the thing sGTM buys you).

Start / Pause lets you record just the action you're trying to prove, not the navigation either side of it — nothing is captured while paused. Each Start–Pause bracket is one "test", and you can label it (what does this prove?) as well as label individual hits inside it for extra detail. Download activity report groups everything by test when you export.

Worked examples

Proving a tag fires on form submit

  1. Open the extension on the page with the form — Tag Activity starts recording automatically.
  2. If the form isn’t on this page yet, click Pause and navigate there. Nothing is captured while paused, so the trip over doesn’t clutter the proof.
  3. Click Start right before you fill the form in.
  4. Submit the form.
  5. Click Pause once the tag fire lands in the feed, then label the segment — e.g. "Contact form submit fires GA4 conversion".

Proving a 60-second dwell-time event

  1. Pause, navigate to the page you’re timing, then Start the moment you land.
  2. Wait it out — don’t navigate away, or the timer resets.
  3. When the engagement/timer tag appears in the feed, Pause and label it — e.g. "Proves 60s engaged-session event".

Proving a phone-number click

  1. Pause, navigate to the page with the number, Start just before you click it.
  2. Click the phone number.
  3. Pause once the resulting tag shows up, label it — e.g. "Proves click-to-call is tracked".

Cookie Report

The default view reads cookies out of your own browser right now — your consent choices, any ad blocker you've got installed, so results vary person to person. Run now (1 credit) does a real server-side scan instead: a clean browser, consent accepted, no blockers, a reproducible result you can put in a privacy policy. Downloading a report while looking at your own browser's view gives you a reminder of that difference first, it's not a block, there are good reasons to want the ad-blocked view too (e.g. showing exactly what a blocked visitor sees).

Free running, paid proof

Running any of the three tools costs nothing, ever. Credits only cover the moment you need a client-facing artefact: a branded PDF or CSV download, or a server-side clean scan — both real infrastructure costs, not a markup. Every credit-spending action asks "this will cost N credits, proceed?" before it charges you.

Don't have the extension yet? See GTM Implementor Tools.