Apple launches new Distraction Control for Safari

Apple is introducing a new ‘Distraction Control’ feature to Safari.

The update lets users remove distracting items – like pop-ups for cookie preferences – while browsing, and it’s included in the new iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia developer betas that launched on Monday (05.08.24).

The feature works by selecting an option to ‘hide distracting items’ from a menu, before choosing the items you want to hide.

The items of choice simply disappear with a nice animation.

However, in a pop-up Apple explains that “hiding distracting items will not permanently remove ads and other content that updates frequently.”

This means the feature can’t be used as an ad blocker to hide every ad permanently.

Meanwhile, MacRumors reports that the parts of a website you hide don’t sync across all of your devices, although it does have memory on the specific device.

It’s easy to reveal hidden items too, while the feature supports hiding more than one element.

As noted by Tech Radar, Distraction Control isn’t powered by A.I. but instead uses Safari’s intelligence to read a web page and recognize changes.