Safari’s new ‘Distraction Control’ feature lets you hide annoying cookie pop-ups

Apple is adding a new feature to Safari called “Distraction Control” that lets you remove distracting things like cookie preference pop-ups while you’re browsing, MacRumors reports. The new feature is available with the fifth iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia developer betas that launched on Monday.

You can get an idea of how Distraction Control works thanks to a video from MacRumors. From a menu, you can choose an option to “Hide Distracting Items” and then select items you want to hide from the page you’re looking at. When items are hidden, they dissipate away with a very slick animation.

In a pop-up shown in the video, Apple notes that “hiding distracting items will not permanently remove ads and other content that updates frequently,” so you won’t be able to use this feature to hide every ad you see for good. Parts of a website that you hide also don’t sync across your devices, MacRumors says.

The new iOS 18 beta also brings changes to the redesigned Photos app, including removing the new carousel view feature.