With the fifth betas of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, Apple is introducing a previously unannounced feature for Safari, Distraction Control.
As the name suggests, Distraction Control is designed to cut down on distracting elements from articles and webpages, such as sign in windows, cookie preference popups, newsletter signup banners, autoplay videos, and more.
Distraction Control can be used to hide static content on a page, but it is not an ad blocker and cannot be used to permanently hide ads. An ad can be temporarily hidden, but the feature was not designed for ads, and an ad will reappear when it refreshes. It was not created for elements on a webpage that regularly change.
To use Distraction Control, go to the Page Menu and select Hide Distracting Items. You can select an area on the page that you want to hide, and static content that you select will remain hidden. It is a good way to eliminate the pesky popovers that show up when browsing online stores, reading articles, and more. iPhone, iPad, and Mac users need to opt in to hiding elements on the page, and Apple says that nothing is hidden that is not proactively selected.
When hiding a cookie banner or GDPR popup with Distraction Control, the function is the same as closing a banner without submitting website preferences at all.
Your Distraction Control settings are on-device and will not sync from device to device, so you will need to hide website elements on each one of your devices. You can use the "Show Hidden Items" option by going to the Safari search field to instantly see all hidden elements on a webpage.
Distraction Control is available in the fifth iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia developer betas, and it should soon be available to public beta testers as well.
Distraction Control is just one of the new features that Apple is introducing in Safari, and it joins other options like the Highlights feature for quickly surfacing info you might want to see on a website, the redesigned Reader interface with table of contents and summaries, and the video viewer that removes distractions when watching a video on a webpage.
