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Hands-On With Safari's New Distraction Control in the iOS 18 Beta

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Apple today surprised us with a new feature for Safari in iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia, with Distraction Control debuting in the latest betas. We thought we'd take a quick look at Distraction Control for those who have not yet been able to update, non-developers, or those who are on the iOS 18.1 beta track.


Distraction Control hides distracting webpage elements like those irritating popups that ask you to sign up for email lists or cookie/GDPR banners. It can be used to hide some autoplay videos too, but it is not an ad blocker. You can temporarily hide ads, but since it wasn't designed to block ads, ads show back up when the site refreshes.

You can basically use Distraction Control to hide any static element on a webpage, and you can get to the controls by going to the page menu in Safari. Just tap the Hide Distracting Items option and then tap whatever you want to hide on a page. Hidden items do not sync across devices, and you can restore anything hidden by tapping on the Show Hidden Items option.

With the betas, Apple also tweaked the Photos app, removing the carousel in response to user feedback.

What do you think of these changes? Let us know in the comments below.

Article Link: Hands-On With Safari's New Distraction Control in the iOS 18 Beta
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/05/safari-distraction-control-hands-on/
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Absolutely love the idea of the content blocker to hide those cookie banners, but the problem is that it's obviously per site and to hide it, you need to see it once and at that point, you can also just click accept.

Granted this will allow you to dismiss it without having to click accept, so that's a plus, but it's not as big of a deal as I first imagined.
 
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Reactions: midkay
If it hides popup video windows that appear on certain websites with the ipad safar, I will look forward to it Haven’t found any extensions that do it since the video is from the website.
 
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Reactions: d-klumpp
Can distraction control do something about Apple’s penchant for coming up with new features and making drastic changes every damn year that require users to change their habits from one iPhone to the next? There is such a thing as “feature overload”, you know.
 
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Admiral Fart said:
I hope it blocks autoplay videos. Any website developer who puts autoplay videos on a site should be arrested.
Click to expand...
It depends, but I understand what you mean.

If it's a webpage where the main content is actually a video and where the intent of the user is clearly just to go watch that video (i.e. YouTube) : Autoplay makes perfect sense.

Otherwise :
Generally, Autoplay videos with sound on is very intrusive and should go away.
Autoplay videos without sound, it depends. If it's part of the visual design of the website (i.e. a land page playing a mute video in the background), it's fine by me.

If you were talking about using your Internet's bandwidth, I will have to disagree even if you're talking about your cellphone. Cell plans are very "generous" nowadays in terms of bandwidth. We're not in the 6 GB era, we're more in the 100 GB era.
 
The animation is Thanos finger snapping items on websites out of existence. I freaking love it. This definitely needs to be synced across devices. I use 1Blocker and it has a similar feature, but this looks easier to use.

I wish Apple would hold back on more things that they show at WWDC, so that they can give us little surprises over time, and so we won't be as disappointed when features slip into the winter and spring. But it might be more difficult to expand development internally without leaks, and it would take away from the WWDC hype. So I get why they don't always do this. But at the very least I'd like to see it for smaller features like this!
 
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Admiral Fart said:
I hope it blocks autoplay videos. Any website developer who puts autoplay videos on a site should be arrested.
Click to expand...

I also love the banners that come up over content with an X at the corner that it takes seven taps before it registers. Buttons they want you to click, however, activate instantly with the slightest accidental touch. Especially the one that activates audio for the autoplaying video.
 
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Reactions: gusmula, Glacier1 and politicsoffear
Apple knows that without an ad blocker, you can’t browse the internet.
But at the same time you can’t shut advertisers.

Stop with limitations for mobile safari.
 
McScooby said:
I’m confused though; it hides the banner, but is that the same as accepting/declining all & does that mean a load of cookies are accepted / declined in one fell swoop?
Click to expand...
This depends on how the site owner implemented it. Nothing is accepted unless the user specifically accepts it (all those "by using this site you are accepting our terms" are out of line), so a site behaving correctly would continue functioning as if the user had not yet made a choice.
 
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Alwaysfindsaway said:
This will be awesome!! I’m SO sick of every single website I go to asking me if I want to agree to cookies. The internet is broken and I want these gone. Stupid European gdpr.
Click to expand...
It is very annoying. Just like the stupid Prop65 warning labels on EVERYTHING.
 
All this clutter and stuff covering 50% of your viewport, they don't teach that in web design school, where is it coming from. Some thoughtless designers did it and it resulted in more money for the website owner, so that's just how they all do it now, because some people will click on them and it'll make them money? When did people stop trying to pretend web design could be art.
 
Good video. Wonderful feature. Though not an ad blocker, it will prove to be useful.
 
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