How to Use Apple’s Distraction Control Feature in Safari

It works best for elements that you know you’re not going to want to interact with, whether that’s an advert for a 10 percent off deal, or a navigation bar offering links to similar stories. Also, While it’s not marketed as an ad blocker, Distraction Control can be used to hide ads to some extent—though the ads do tend to pop back in again as you continue browsing.

Should you use Distraction Control to dismiss a pop-up asking to set preferences, or agree to cookies, or something along those lines, the website will act as if you’d never interacted with the dialog box: So in the case of cookies, for example, you might find the site doesn’t remember your location or your preferences, as cookies haven’t been allowed. On some pages, a little trial and error might be needed to figure out what you can hide while keeping everything functioning normally.

How to Use Safari Distraction Control

Safari won’t identify and hide distracting items automatically—you need to hide items manually if you don’t want them to be visible. Load up a web page, and scroll to the part of the page showing the elements you want to hide from view: It’s a quirk of Distraction Control (at least for now) that you can’t scroll around a website while you’re also hiding parts of it.

Tap the icon to the left of the address bar at the bottom of the Safari interface, which looks like a rectangle on top of several lines. From there, choose Hide Distracting Items: You’ll then be able to select parts of the webpage onscreen, and you can tap on the Hide button on any element to dismiss it (which comes with a satisfying little animation).

You can start hiding items with a couple of taps.

Photograph: David Nield

Sometimes the web page reorganizes itself to account for the missing element, but sometimes not; it most likely depends on what you’re hiding and how the page has been coded. You can keep going with hiding items, and a running total is kept at the bottom of the screen. When you’re happy with how the page is looking, tap Done to return to browsing (or tap Cancel to undo your changes).

If you want to restore the items you’ve hidden, tap the same button to the left of the address bar at the bottom of the Safari interface, then choose Show Hidden Items and Show to confirm. Everything you’ve previously hidden comes back into view again—there’s no option to unhide elements one by one.