The one-minute triage
Do these in order and stop at the first one that changes the result.
- Private window, no extensions. Open a new private/incognito window and go to grok.com. Renders? Your problem is a browser extension or cached data — go to step 3.
- A different browser. If the private window is also black, try another browser entirely. If that one works, the first browser’s profile is damaged; a fresh profile fixes it.
- Hard reload and clear site data. Back in your normal window: open DevTools (F12), right-click the reload button, choose Empty cache and hard reload. If that is not enough, clear cookies and site data for grok.com specifically — you will be signed out, so have your login ready.
- Disable content blockers for grok.com. uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, aggressive tracker blockers and some corporate security extensions can strip a script the app needs. Allow-list grok.com and reload.
If none of the four changes anything, the problem is not on your machine. Skip to When it is not you.
Why a black screen specifically
A blank white page usually means nothing loaded. A black page usually means the app’s own dark background painted and then the JavaScript that draws everything on top of it died. That narrows the cause considerably:
- A stale service worker or cached bundle. Web apps ship updates constantly; a half-updated cache leaves the browser running new code against old assets. Clearing site data is the reliable cure.
- A blocked script or font. Content blockers and strict DNS filtering (Pi-hole, corporate DNS, some VPN “ad blocking” toggles) can drop a request the app treats as fatal.
- Hardware acceleration. On older GPUs and some Linux drivers, canvas- and WebGL-heavy interfaces render black. Turn off hardware acceleration in your browser settings, restart the browser, and try again.
- An extension that rewrites the page. Dark-mode forcers, translation overlays, font replacers and “AI assistant” extensions all inject into pages and all can break a single-page app.
When it is not you
If grok.com is black in a private window, in a second browser, and on your phone’s mobile data, then it is not your setup. Two things are worth checking:
- Is it everyone? Search for recent posts from other users, or ask someone on a different network to load grok.com. A widespread outage looks like a burst of identical complaints within a few minutes.
- Is it your region or network? Grok is not available everywhere, and some corporate and campus networks block AI services outright. A VPN can both fix this and cause it — if you were on a VPN, turn it off and retry; if you were not, that is a data point too.
There is nothing else to do but wait for xAI to fix an outage. We have no channel into their systems and neither does any other third-party tool.
What this means if you automate Grok
Batch tools — ours included — drive the same grok.com interface you use by hand. When the interface will not render, no extension can generate anything either; a queue will simply stall. That is expected behaviour, not a bug in the tool. Wait for the site to come back, then resume the queue.
Related
- Grok: error loading conversations
- Grok says “click file above to download it” but gives no file
- Grok Automation help centre — for problems with our extension, not with grok.com