The extension is installed. You are on Gemini. You clicked download. And the file that landed in your Downloads folder still has the sparkle on it — the extension may as well not be there.
Below are the eight checks, in the order worth running them. That order is not arbitrary: it starts with the ones that take five seconds, and puts the single most common silent failure at number three — a cause almost nobody guesses, because the extension looks completely healthy while it happens.
One thing to separate before you start. This page is about the file arriving with the watermark fully intact. If the mark came off but left a faint outline or a ghost behind, that is a different problem with different causes — skip to step 7.
Step 1: Is the extension actually switched on?
There are two independent switches and it is easy to have one off.
- Chrome level: open chrome://extensions and confirm Erasio is present and its toggle is blue, not grey. A Chrome update or a crash can leave an extension disabled.
- Erasio level: open the side panel from the toolbar icon and check the main enable toggle there. This is separate from Chrome's toggle — the extension can be enabled in Chrome but switched off in the panel.
If you are browsing in Incognito, extensions are disabled there by default. Open chrome://extensions, click Details on Erasio, and enable "Allow in Incognito".
Step 2: Are you on a page the extension runs on?
Erasio activates on three sites and only three:
- gemini.google.com
- aistudio.google.com
- labs.google/fx/tools/flow
Anywhere else — a Google Drive preview of a generated image, a Docs embed, a link someone sent you, a different AI generator — nothing runs, by design. That is a deliberate scoping choice rather than a bug: the extension asks for access to the smallest possible set of sites.
If your file is already saved and you are not on one of those pages, the extension is the wrong tool for that job. Use the online tool instead, which cleans a file you already have.
On Google Flow specifically, there is one more switch: Flow support has its own setting in the side panel. It is on by default, but if removal works on Gemini and not on Flow, that is the first thing to check.
Step 3: Do you have an anti-fingerprinting extension installed?
This is the one to look at hardest, because it produces a perfect impression of a broken extension while everything about Erasio is working correctly.
Erasio removes watermarks by reading the actual pixels of your image out of a canvas element, computing the correction, and writing the pixels back. That read is a single browser API call: getImageData.
That same API call is how advertisers fingerprint browsers. So privacy extensions — Canvas Fingerprint Defender, CanvasBlocker, Trace, and the anti-fingerprinting modes in some privacy-focused browsers — defend against it by adding small random noise to whatever getImageData returns. It is a completely reasonable defence, and against tracking it works.
But it means the pixels Erasio reads are not the pixels in your image. The maths is then run on deliberately corrupted input, so the correction is wrong, and depending on how aggressive the blocker is you get anything from faint residue to no visible change at all. Nothing errors. Nothing logs a failure. The extension believes it succeeded.
To test it: disable the privacy extension, reload the Gemini tab (the reload matters — the page has to be re-initialised), and download again. If that fixes it, most of these blockers support a per-site allowlist. Whitelisting the three Google domains above keeps your protection everywhere else while letting removal work.
Step 4: Is this a work or school profile?
Managed Chrome profiles can block extensions by policy, force-remove them after install, or block automatic downloads — sometimes silently, and sometimes an install appears to succeed and is quietly reverted later.
The tell is a small "Managed by your organization" note at the bottom of the Chrome menu, or on chrome://management. If you see it, the extension route is likely closed to you on that profile and no amount of troubleshooting will open it.
The workaround is the online tool: it runs entirely in the browser tab with nothing to install, so it works on locked-down machines and Chromebooks where extension policy blocks installs.
No install required, and the file never leaves your machine — the processing runs in the tab.
Use the free online tool instead →Step 5: Are you in preview mode without realising it?
By default, clicking download on an image opens a preview first, showing you the cleaned result with a Download button and an option to adjust settings. It is not an extra confirmation step for its own sake — it is the chance to check the result before it hits disk.
If you clicked download, saw a modal, dismissed it, and then went looking in your Downloads folder, there is nothing there — because the actual download happens when you click the button inside the preview. That reads exactly like "the extension did nothing".
If you would rather skip it and have files save straight to disk already cleaned, there is a setting for that in the side panel. Turn it on and downloads go direct with no modal.
Step 6: Did Google change the page?
The extension hooks into Gemini and Flow's download flow. Google ships changes to those interfaces without notice, and a change to how the download button is wired can stop the hook firing until the extension is updated to match.
The signature is distinctive: everything worked for weeks, then stopped abruptly for every file, with no change on your side.
Chrome usually auto-updates extensions within a few hours, but you can force it: open chrome://extensions, turn on Developer mode, and click Update. Then reload your Gemini tab.
Every release and what it fixed is listed publicly — worth checking whether a fix has already shipped for what you are seeing.
Check the changelog →Step 7: The file downloaded, but the mark is still faintly there
If removal clearly ran and the result is imperfect rather than untouched — a faint outline, a ghost of the logo, a patch of haze — then the extension is working and something about the image is fighting the correction.
That has seven distinct causes, each with its own visual signature, and three of them cannot be fixed with any setting because the information needed was destroyed before processing began. Diagnosing it is a matter of reading the residue.
Different problem, different page: how to tell which of the seven kinds of leftover residue you are looking at, and what actually fixes each one.
Watermark still faintly visible after removal →Step 8: Still stuck — what to send us
If you have been through the list and it still fails, a report with these five things gets a real answer instead of a request for more information:
- Which site: Gemini, AI Studio, or Flow.
- Image or video, and roughly what resolution.
- Extension version (chrome://extensions) and Chrome version (chrome://version).
- Whether any privacy or anti-fingerprinting extension is installed — even if you already disabled it.
- What actually happened: no modal at all, modal but no file, file but watermark intact, or file with faint residue. These are four different failures.
That last one matters more than anything else in the list. It narrows the cause faster than any log.
The checklist, condensed
| What you are seeing | Most likely cause | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing happens at all on any file | Extension disabled at Chrome or panel level | 1 |
| Works on Gemini, not on Flow | Flow support toggled off in the side panel | 2 |
| Looks healthy, but files stay watermarked | Anti-fingerprinting extension poisoning canvas reads | 3 |
| Install fails or silently reverts | Managed work or school profile policy | 4 |
| Modal appears, no file in Downloads | Preview mode — download completes inside the modal | 5 |
| Worked for weeks, then stopped for everything | Google changed the page; extension needs updating | 6 |
| File is clean-ish but a faint mark remains | Not an extension problem — see the residue guide | 7 |
Common questions
Does reinstalling the extension help?
Rarely, and it costs you your saved settings. Everything in steps 1 to 6 is more likely. Reinstall only if chrome://extensions shows the extension in an error state.
Does it work in Edge, Brave, or Arc?
Chromium-based browsers generally work. Brave is the notable caveat: its built-in fingerprinting protection does the same canvas-noise thing described in step 3, so set Shields to allow fingerprinting on the Google domains if removal misbehaves there.
Does a failed attempt cost credits?
No. Credits are consumed when a removal completes. A download that never got processed has not charged you.
Is there a way to clean files without the extension at all?
Yes — the online tool takes a file you have already saved and cleans it in the browser, no install involved. It is the right fallback for managed machines and for files that arrived from someone else.
New to the extension, or setting it up on another machine? The setup guide covers installation and first run end to end.
Erasio setup guide →