---
title: "Gating Hotjar Recording Behind Consent"
canonical_url: https://ot.webclat.com/qa/gate-hotjar-recording-behind-consent
description: "Hotjar has no documented live pause/resume API, so gate it at load time instead of trying to toggle an active session - here's the pattern and how to handle revocation."
source: Webclat | OneTrust Solutions (OneTrust partner, independent consultancy)
---

# How do I start or stop Hotjar recording dynamically based on the visitor's consent choice?

**Short answer:** Hotjar's snippet has no documented public API to pause and resume an already-initialized recording session, so the reliable pattern is to never load the snippet at all until consent is granted - treating it as a load-gate problem, not a live-toggle problem - and to clear Hotjar's cookies and stop reinitializing it if consent is later revoked.

## Why this happens

Hotjar's script begins recording essentially as soon as it executes and reads its site settings; there's no officially documented "stop recording but keep the session" hook for an already-running instance. Teams that try to build a live on/off switch around an already-loaded snippet are working against that gap rather than with it.

The clean equivalent of a live toggle is upstream of the snippet entirely: control whether the snippet ever executes in the first place, using the same consent-gate pattern you'd use for any other consent-controlled tag.

## Fix it

1. **Never ship the Hotjar snippet as an executable script by default** - Mark it inert on page load (`type="text/plain"` with a `data-category` attribute matching your CMP's category naming, the same pattern used for every other consent-gated tag on this site) so the browser never executes it before consent is checked.

   ```
<script type="text/plain" data-category="analytics">
  (function(h,o,t,j,a,r){
    h.hj = h.hj || function(){ (h.hj.q = h.hj.q || []).push(arguments); };
    h._hjSettings = { hjid: YOUR_HJID, hjsv: YOUR_HJSV };
    a = o.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
    r = o.createElement("script"); r.async = 1;
    r.src = t + h._hjSettings.hjid + j + h._hjSettings.hjsv;
    a.appendChild(r);
  })(window, document, "https://static.hotjar.com/c/hotjar-", ".js?sv=");
</script>
   ```

2. **Have your CMP activate the script only on the matching category accept** - Configure the consent-management library to find `type="text/plain"` scripts tagged with the accepted category and swap them to executable `text/javascript` (or clone-and-replace the node) - this is the standard activation mechanism, not something Hotjar-specific.

3. **Handle revocation as a teardown, not a pause** - If a visitor later withdraws analytics consent, clear Hotjar's cookies (`_hjSession*`, `_hjid`, and related keys) and simply don't reinitialize the snippet on the next load - there's no supported way to "pause" a session already in progress, so don't build one.

4. **Guard SPA route-change calls the same way** - If you call `hj('stateChange', path)` on client-side navigation, guard every call site with the same consent check used for the initial load - a route change after consent is denied shouldn't fire this call just because the snippet happened to load earlier in the session.

5. **Confirm the gate is structural, not a JavaScript conditional** - A `type="text/plain"` swap prevents execution at the browser level; an `if (consentGranted) { loadHotjar(); }` conditional around an otherwise-normal script tag is more fragile and can race with other page scripts during initial load.

## How to verify it worked

- In a fresh browser session (cookies cleared), load the page, decline the analytics category, and confirm no request to `static.hotjar.com` appears in the Network tab and no `_hj*` cookies are set.
- Accept the analytics category, reload, and confirm the request and cookies now appear.
- Accept consent, then revoke it through your consent-preferences UI, and confirm existing `_hj*` cookies are cleared and no further Hotjar requests fire on subsequent page loads in that session.

## Related

- [What's the correct pattern to block GA/GTM/AdSense from loading until the visitor accepts cookies?](https://ot.webclat.com/qa/gate-ga-gtm-adsense-behind-cookie-consent)
- [How do I fire a GTM trigger the instant a visitor updates their consent choice, without a page reload?](https://ot.webclat.com/qa/gtm-consent-update-trigger)
- [Why doesn't Google Consent Mode v2's ad_personalization/analytics_storage signal update the way I expect?](https://ot.webclat.com/qa/consent-mode-v2-signal-not-updating)

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