Something on your page is underneath the launcher

The launcher sits over a cookie banner, a sticky footer bar, a floating basket button or a back to top control, and whatever is underneath cannot be clicked.

In rough order of how often each one turns out to be the answer. Work down rather than across: each carries a way to tell whether it is yours before you change anything.

• 1

  Both elements are pinned to the same bottom corner

  Why

  The launcher is fixed, placed from the bottom and from one side by the offsets in the appearance settings, and it is 56 pixels square. Floating controls from other scripts are built the same way and default to the same corner with a similar inset, so two things that have never met end up competing for one square of screen.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Inspect your own element and read its computed position. If it is fixed, anchored to the bottom and to the same side as the widget, and its inset is close to the widget's offsets, this is a collision over space rather than a fight over stacking order.

  Fix

  Move one of them. The widget's vertical offset accepts any value from 0 to 120, which lifts the launcher clear of anything running along the bottom, and it is set through the API rather than on the appearance screen. Switching the widget to the other bottom corner is the other move, it is available on the appearance screen, and it is usually the cheaper one when the thing being covered is a corner control too.

• 2

  Your element cannot be lifted over it with a stacking value alone

  Why

  The launcher sits at 2147483000, which is high but not the maximum. An element that is a direct child of the body with a higher value does win. An element nested inside an ancestor that creates its own stacking context does not, whatever number you give it, because the number is resolved inside that context and the whole context is painted below.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Select your element in the inspector and walk up its ancestors looking for a transform, a filter, a backdrop filter, an opacity below 1, or a containment property. Any one of those creates a stacking context. If you find one, your element's stacking value was never being compared against the widget's at all.

  Fix

  Move the element out to be a direct child of the body, which is what most banner scripts already do, and give it a value above the widget's. If you cannot move it, move the widget instead: the corner is on the appearance screen and the offsets are set through the API.

• 3

  The covering element is in the browser's top layer

  Why

  A dialog shown as a modal, or an element shown as a popover, is painted in the browser's top layer, which sits above every stacking value on the page including the launcher's. This is the same problem in reverse, and it usually arrives as a report that the widget has vanished.

  How to confirm it is this one

  Inspect the covering element. A dialog element carrying the open attribute that was shown as a modal, or an element carrying a popover attribute, settles it immediately. A modal also blocks interaction with the page behind it, so the launcher is not merely hidden, it is unreachable until the dialog closes.

  Fix

  Nothing to change in the widget. A consent banner that covers everything until it is answered is arguably in the right order. If you want the launcher usable underneath, show the banner as an ordinary fixed element rather than as a modal.

• 4

  The offsets are still at their defaults and your bar is taller than they are

  Why

  Both offsets default to 20 pixels, which is the right distance from the corner on a page with nothing else in it. A sticky footer, a promotional strip or an app install prompt running the width of the window along the bottom is taller than that, so the launcher lands on it.

  How to confirm it is this one

  The offsets are not on the appearance screen, which carries the theme, the colours, the wording, the corner, the panel width and the radius and nothing else. Read them back from the assistant record over the API instead. If both are still at their default of 20 and the thing being covered runs along the bottom edge rather than sitting in the corner, that is the whole answer.

  Fix

  Raise the vertical offset until the launcher clears the bar: take the height of the bar and add a little. Note that the panel is placed from the same offset and caps its height at the viewport height less twice that offset plus the launcher and the gap above it, so a large offset costs real panel height on a short screen.

There is no way to put the launcher anywhere other than a bottom corner. The position setting accepts bottom right or bottom left and nothing else, and the two offsets reach at most 120 pixels in from the bottom and from the side. If the only free space in your layout is the top of the page or the middle of a side, the answer is to move your own element, because the widget cannot go there. That limit is deliberate: a launcher that can be placed anywhere is a launcher that ends up on somebody's checkout button.

Can I put the launcher at the top of the page?

No. The position setting offers bottom right and bottom left, and the offsets move it in from those two edges rather than around the page. Visitors look in the bottom corners for a chat control, and the constraint keeps it where they look.

Why is the stacking value set so high?

Because the alternative is being buried. A page can create a stacking context anywhere, and a widget that picked a modest number would sit under the first sticky header, cookie bar or full screen menu it met, on a site whose markup we never see. Sitting near the top and letting you move it is the honest trade.

Does raising the vertical offset make the panel smaller?

Yes, and by twice what you might expect, because the panel keeps its distance from the bottom and also caps its height against the viewport, and the offset is counted at both ends. On a laptop screen a large offset is the difference between a panel at the height you set and one cut down to fit.