Grammarly Extension Not Working in Chrome? Here's the Fix

Why Is Grammarly Not Working in Chrome?

Grammarly breaks in Chrome for one of five common reasons, and reinstalling should be your last step, not your first. Work through the list below in order — most people fix it within a couple of minutes without ever touching the install button. None of it needs advanced troubleshooting, since Chrome exposes everything you need through its own extensions settings page.

• Signed out or expired session — Grammarly logs you out after long inactivity or a password change elsewhere.
• Turned off for this site — a stray click can disable Grammarly on one domain while it keeps working everywhere else.
• Another extension is competing for the text field — grammar tools, autofill managers, and script blockers can all grab the same input box.
• Grammarly's servers are having an outage — rare, but it happens, and no local fix will help until it clears.
• The extension itself is outdated or corrupted — Chrome usually auto-updates it, but a failed update can leave it half-working.

The sections below cover each cause in order, then move into what to do when Grammarly is missing entirely from Google Docs, Word, Outlook, or your phone — those need different fixes from the browser extension.

Is Grammarly Down Right Now? Check Status First

Before changing any settings, rule out a Grammarly-side outage — a browser fix can't repair a server problem. Grammarly's own status page lists the health of its editor and browser extension separately, so you can tell in seconds whether the fault is on their end or yours.

1. Open a new tab and go to status.grammarly.com.
2. Scan the component list for anything not marked as operational, particularly the browser extension and editor services.
3. If everything looks normal there, the fault is local — move on to the login and site-access fixes below.
4. If Grammarly is reporting an incident, wait it out; reinstalling or changing permissions during an outage won't speed anything up.

Bookmark the status page if Grammarly is central to your daily writing — checking it first saves you from troubleshooting a problem that was never yours to fix.

Fix Grammarly Login and Account Sync Problems

A stale login session is the most common cause of Grammarly quietly going silent with no error message. Signing all the way out and back in refreshes the token the extension needs to talk to your account.

1. Click the Grammarly icon in the Chrome toolbar and choose Log out from the account menu.
2. Click the icon again, choose Log in, and complete sign-in in the popup window that opens.
3. Reload the tab you were writing in (Ctrl+R on Windows/ChromeOS, Cmd+R on Mac) so the extension reconnects to that page.
4. If sign-in itself won't load, clear cookies for grammarly.com under Chrome's site settings and try again.
5. If you sign in through Google or Microsoft single sign-on, log out of that account in a separate tab too — a stale SSO session can block Grammarly's own token refresh.

Turn Grammarly Back On for This Website

Grammarly can be switched off for a single site without you noticing, especially after clicking 'don't check this site' by mistake or restoring an old browser profile.

1. Open chrome://extensions in a new tab.
2. Find Grammarly in the list and click Details.
3. Under Site access, make sure it's set to On all sites, or add the site manually under On specific sites.
4. Return to the page, click the Grammarly icon, and toggle it back on for that domain.
5. Reload the page so the extension can attach to the text field.

This toggle is per-site, not global, so turning Grammarly on for one page never affects any other tab you have open.

On a Chromebook, the same chrome://extensions page and site-access toggle apply — the touch-friendly interface just moves things around slightly. See our Grammarly on Chromebook guide if the icon isn't where you expect it.

Fix Extension Conflicts That Block Grammarly

Any extension that also injects itself into a text box can crowd out Grammarly's floating icon, even if neither extension shows an error message.

Grammarly Not Working in Google Docs

Grammarly's Chrome extension treats Google Docs differently from a normal web page: it needs its own permission grant, and its icon lives inside the document toolbar rather than only in the browser toolbar. Docs support has historically lagged behind Grammarly's support for plain text boxes, so treat a gap here as expected friction, not a sign that anything else is broken.

1. Open the Google Doc and look for the Grammarly G icon in the top-right of the document itself, not just next to the address bar.
2. If it's missing, force a hard refresh with Ctrl+Shift+R (Cmd+Shift+R on Mac).
3. Click the in-document icon and grant permission if Docs prompts you — this is a separate step from the browser extension's own site access. Check our permissions guide if the prompt looks unfamiliar.
4. If suggestions still don't appear, paste a line into a plain text box on another site to confirm the extension itself is working outside Docs.

Why Grammarly Stopped Working in Word or Outlook

Grammarly in Word and desktop Outlook runs through a separate desktop add-in, not the Chrome extension, so nothing in this guide fixes it disappearing from Word's ribbon.

This split trips people up because both surfaces share the same Grammarly account, but they're built and updated independently. Outlook on the web (outlook.office.com) is different — that's a browser tab, so the Chrome-extension fixes above do apply there. Desktop Outlook and the Word app do not.

Grammarly Not Working on Android or iPhone

There's no Grammarly Chrome extension on Android or iPhone because mobile Chrome doesn't support desktop-style browser extensions at all — that's a Chrome limitation, not something Grammarly can fix on its end.

• On Android, install the Grammarly Keyboard app, which works across every app on the phone, not just Chrome.
• On iPhone, add the Grammarly keyboard through iOS Settings, or write inside the Grammarly app's own built-in browser.
• Because mobile Chrome can't run any browser extension, no grammar checker — Grammarly or a competitor — will appear in its menu on a phone.

This isn't a bug worth reporting to support — it's simply outside what mobile Chrome allows for any extension, not just Grammarly.

When to Fully Reinstall (and What to Use While You Wait)

Reinstall only after you've ruled out an outage, a login problem, site access, and a conflicting extension — reinstalling wipes local settings and rarely fixes any of those four.

1. Go to chrome://extensions, find Grammarly, and click Remove.
2. Close every Chrome window completely, not just the tab, then reopen Chrome.
3. Reinstall Grammarly from the Chrome Web Store and sign back in.
4. Open the puzzle-piece menu and pin the icon again so you can see its status without hunting for it.

If Grammarly is still unreliable, or you want a backup while its servers recover, the extensions below cover different angles: a rewriting-focused option, a provider-independent checker, and a fix for sites that block text selection.

For a fuller side-by-side, read our Grammarly vs LanguageTool comparison, browse more Grammarly alternatives if you switch permanently, or check our methodology for how we vet grammar-checker picks.