Hi Community,I am experiencing an issue where a page in the AEM Author environment displays a grey/blank screen when opened in Edit mode. The page is accessible on the published environment and appears to function as expected there.We are trying to understand the possible causes and recommended troubleshooting approaches for this type of behavior.A few questions:What are the common reasons an AEM page might display a grey/blank screen in Author while working correctly on Publish? Are there specific logs, tools, or debugging techniques you typically use to identify the root cause? Have you encountered situations where page components or page content caused Author rendering issues? What is the best approach to isolate the problematic component or configuration when the page itself cannot be opened normally in the editor?Any suggestions, best practices, or experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Level 2

Solved

AEM Author Page Displays Grey/Blank Screen in Edit Mode

Forum|Forum|28 days ago
June 8, 2026
5 replies
123 views

Hi Community,

I am experiencing an issue where a page in the AEM Author environment displays a grey/blank screen when opened in Edit mode. The page is accessible on the published environment and appears to function as expected there.

We are trying to understand the possible causes and recommended troubleshooting approaches for this type of behavior.

A few questions:

What are the common reasons an AEM page might display a grey/blank screen in Author while working correctly on Publish?
Are there specific logs, tools, or debugging techniques you typically use to identify the root cause?
Have you encountered situations where page components or page content caused Author rendering issues?
What is the best approach to isolate the problematic component or configuration when the page itself cannot be opened normally in the editor?

Any suggestions, best practices, or experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Best answer by kapil_rajoria

Hi @YaminiKolhe ,
It seems to be a JS error. Try clearing out the console errors. If it doesn’t work for you, create a new page and check if it still displays the grey screen,
if yes then you might have mistakenly broke the page component’s JS. Check if you have recently made changes in that.
if no, drag components till the grey screen appears and keep an eye on the console errors, then fix it.

AMANATH_ULLAH

Community Advisor

@YaminiKolhe

The issue should be majorly from Author-specific JS/clientlibs. since its working in publisher
Can you check the browser console, error.log and share the errors here
you also also try removing/disabling each component one by one to isolate the issue and test if page works

Amanath Ullah

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Hi @AMANATH_ULLAH,

Thanks for the response. I checked the browser console and the error.log file, but I couldn't find any significant clues related to this issue. I also tried disabling/removing the components one by one to isolate the problematic component and verify whether the page works correctly afterward, but the issue still persists.

Nilesh_Mali

Level 3

Hi @YaminiKolhe

One common cause I've seen in AEM is a component performing heavy repository traversal or an expensive query during page rendering. If the page contains many components, or a custom component executes an unindexed QueryBuilder/SQL2 query, Author can become unresponsive and display a grey/blank screen while Publish continues to work.

A few things I'd check first:

Browser Network and Console tabs for failed requests or JS errors.
aemerror.log / Cloud Manager logs for traversal query warnings, timeouts, or Sling Model exceptions.
Query performance and Explain Query results to verify proper index usage.
Components with heavy logic in @PostConstruct methods.
Temporarily disable/remove components to isolate the problematic one.

In my experience, the root cause is often a missing index, expensive query, or a component traversing a large content subtree during Author rendering.

Hope this helps.

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Hi @Nilesh_Mali

Thanks for the response. I checked the browser console and the error.log file, but I couldn't find any significant clues related to this issue. I also tried disabling/removing the components one by one to isolate the problematic component and verify whether the page works correctly afterward, but the issue still persists.

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Issue resolved.

After further investigation, the issue was found to be unrelated to the initially suspected component. The root cause was identified as an Author-mode rendering behavior caused by a viewport-based height configuration. In AEM Author mode, this caused the author overlay to cover most of the page, making it appear as a grey/blank screen, while the page continued to render correctly in Publish mode.

The issue was validated by adjusting the height behavior in Author mode, after which the page rendered successfully and all content became visible. An Author-specific styling update was implemented to prevent the overlay from obscuring the page content while preserving the intended Publish experience.

Thank you for the assistance provided during the investigation.

rk_pandian

Level 4

Hi @YaminiKolhe, can you please check the below:

If your client libraries are loading properly?
I also see a syntax error in your browser console logs - would be good to check that one.
Also if you have a possibility to check the weekend site in the same AEM instance then I would suggest to check that as well, to make sure its not an instance issue.
If the site is loading in publish, is a different code/release deployed to the publish instance? I would check with the same code everywhere (the previous known good build).
Also publish can show cached content if accessed via domain, so if possible check by directly hitting the AEM server to see the actual content.

Regards,

Ramkumar

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Hi @rk_pandian,

Issue resolved.

After further investigation, the issue was found to be unrelated to the initially suspected component. The root cause was identified as an Author-mode rendering behavior caused by a viewport-based height configuration. In AEM Author mode, this caused the author overlay to cover most of the page, making it appear as a grey/blank screen, while the page continued to render correctly in Publish mode.

The issue was validated by adjusting the height behavior in Author mode, after which the page rendered successfully and all content became visible. An Author-specific styling update was implemented to prevent the overlay from obscuring the page content while preserving the intended Publish experience.

Thank you for the assistance provided during the investigation.

konstantyn_diachenko

Community Advisor

Hi @YaminiKolhe ,

I see the weird error in your console log:
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ‘<’, “<?xml vers”… is not valid JSON.

Could you please check what does it refer to? Additionally, do you see that clientlibs are loading in editor?

Kostiantyn Diachenko, Community Advisor, Certified Senior AEM Developer, creator of free AEM VLT Tool, maintainer of AEM Tools plugin.

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Hi @konstantyn_diachenko ,

Actually this console error is not related to this above one.
------------------------

Issue resolved.

After further investigation, the issue was found to be unrelated to the initially suspected component. The root cause was identified as an Author-mode rendering behavior caused by a viewport-based height configuration. In AEM Author mode, this caused the author overlay to cover most of the page, making it appear as a grey/blank screen, while the page continued to render correctly in Publish mode.

The issue was validated by adjusting the height behavior in Author mode, after which the page rendered successfully and all content became visible. An Author-specific styling update was implemented to prevent the overlay from obscuring the page content while preserving the intended Publish experience.

Thank you for the assistance provided during the investigation.

kapil_rajoria

Accepted solution

Community Advisor

Hi @YaminiKolhe ,
It seems to be a JS error. Try clearing out the console errors. If it doesn’t work for you, create a new page and check if it still displays the grey screen,
if yes then you might have mistakenly broke the page component’s JS. Check if you have recently made changes in that.
if no, drag components till the grey screen appears and keep an eye on the console errors, then fix it.

Y

YaminiKolheAuthor

Level 2

Hi @kapil_rajoria ,

Actually the console error is not related to the above one.

------------------------

Issue resolved.

After further investigation, the issue was found to be unrelated to the initially suspected component. The root cause was identified as an Author-mode rendering behavior caused by a viewport-based height configuration. In AEM Author mode, this caused the author overlay to cover most of the page, making it appear as a grey/blank screen, while the page continued to render correctly in Publish mode.

The issue was validated by adjusting the height behavior in Author mode, after which the page rendered successfully and all content became visible. An Author-specific styling update was implemented to prevent the overlay from obscuring the page content while preserving the intended Publish experience.

Thank you for the assistance provided during the investigation.

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