Which cookie banner Whence reads
Whence does not show a cookie banner of its own. It reads the answer your visitors already give to your store’s cookie banner, and it starts recording only once a visitor allows statistics.
What Whence reads
On Shopify, Whence follows Shopify’s Customer Privacy API. That covers Shopify’s free cookie banner (Shopify admin, Settings > Customer privacy) and any consent app connected to it, such as Consentmo or Pandectes. There is nothing to connect.
On other platforms, Whence reads:
- Google Consent Mode v2 (the consent updates your tags push to the data layer),
- Cookiebot,
- OneTrust.
If you use another banner, have it tell Whence what the visitor chose when they answer:
whence.consent({ analytics: true, marketing: true })analytics allows recording. marketing allows reading the Klaviyo cookie, keeping ad click IDs and sending events to your ad platforms. Calling it with analytics: false is a refusal: Whence does not start, or stops recording right away if it had started.
One “no” is enough. An explicit refusal from Shopify’s banner, your consent tool or whence.consent() stops recording, identity capture and sending to ad platforms. The only exception is a setting you turn on yourself: Record even when a visitor declines. Even then, nothing is sent to your ad platforms without marketing consent.
Step 1: The Consent block
Open Settings > Recording & privacy. The Consent block (also shown in Setup > Install, and in the Whence app inside your Shopify admin) says what Whence found:
- Using your store’s cookie banner: “Whence last read a visitor’s consent from Shopify’s cookie banner on September 12”, for example. The source can also be your consent tool, Google Consent Mode or your website.
- Whence will read your store’s cookie banner: no visits yet. As soon as visits arrive, Whence checks that it can read your visitors’ consent.
- We could not find a cookie banner on your store: “Visits are arriving, but no visitor has answered a cookie banner yet. Whence does not show a banner of its own: turn on yours.”
Below the state, the block holds two switches, both off by default: Record without waiting for consent and Record even when a visitor declines.
Step 2: When Whence finds no banner
Turn on a banner your visitors can answer:
- On Shopify, click Turn on Shopify’s cookie banner. It opens your Shopify admin at Settings > Customer privacy, where the banner is free. A consent app connected to Shopify works too. In the Whence app inside your Shopify admin, the button is Open Customer privacy.
- On other platforms, the block says: “Add a consent tool such as Cookiebot, OneTrust or Google Consent Mode, or have your banner call whence.consent() when the visitor answers.”
The block switches to Using your store’s cookie banner once a visitor has answered your banner.
Whence no longer offers a cookie banner of its own, and no longer shows it, even on stores that had turned it on. If your store used it, turn on your own banner so your visitors can answer again. The consent records it already collected are kept: see Data retention.