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

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.

Related Roundups: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia

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Top Rated Comments

Admiral Fart Avatar
9 months ago
I hope it blocks autoplay videos. Any website developer who puts autoplay videos on a site should be arrested.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DoogH Avatar
9 months ago

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.
Gdpr is amazing. Privacy is a good thing.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Alwaysfindsaway Avatar
9 months ago
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.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macOSSlawHotelaw Avatar
9 months ago

Gdpr is amazing. Privacy is a good thing.
I have to agree. The prompts to agree or reject cookies might be very verbose, annoying and poorly implemented, especially on mobile devices, but data protection itself is a good thing.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sniffies Avatar
9 months ago
Can it hide paywalls?
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarAnalogy Avatar
9 months ago

I hope it blocks autoplay videos. Any website developer who puts autoplay videos on a site should be arrested.
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.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)