Starting with iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and Safari 18 (part of macOS Sequoia, among others), you can use the new ‘Hide Distractions’ feature in Safari. This allows you to hide distracting elements on a website on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
The function is mainly intended to hide permanent parts on a website. Think of a pop-up window to log in, floating buttons, information blocks and other elements. You cannot hide advertisements with this function, only permanent parts that do not change automatically.
Hide distracting items in Safari
A website contains a variety of elements that make a page unique and give it a certain look. With the Hide Distractions feature in Safari, a user can hide certain blocks and elements on a website. This reduces distractions and focuses more on the content. The feature is available on all iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices running iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and Safari 18 or later.
No adblocker
The function is mainly intended to hide permanent components. Dynamic blocks or content that changes regularly are difficult to hide. This is also the case for advertisements, which you can only hide once and after refreshing the page they usually reappear. Hide distracting components in Safari is therefore not an adblocker, but it is possible.
Although advertisements are often experienced as disruptive, they do provide a website with a source of income that allows the web page to continue to exist and allows you to use it for free. It is up to the website owner to make a good assessment to ensure that advertisements and floating elements are not experienced as disruptive. Do you use an adblocker? Then at least add your favorite website to the Whitelist.
For many users, it is self-evident that a website exists and is accessible, but there is a lot of work behind it. Creating content, elements and functions on a website is time-consuming. Apple deciding that you can hide these shows little respect for the creators and builders of the internet.
Set Hide Distracting Items in Safari
If you want to hide parts of a website, you can use the step-by-step plan below.
- Open a website in Safari for iPhone, iPad, or Mac
- In the address bar, tap or click the rounded rectangle with two lines
- Select ‘Hide distracting parts’
- Tap the parts you want to hide
- Confirm by tapping/clicking ‘Done’ in the address bar
Once you’ve chosen the elements, they’ll be hidden every time you visit Safari. Note that you’ll need to do this for all pages and on every device. The changes won’t be synced to all your other Apple devices. Also, the feature is only available in Safari and not in Apple’s own apps like the App Store or TV app, where you can’t hide distracting elements.
In addition, the components are not always hidden, as soon as an adjustment is made, the elements are displayed again. Furthermore, hiding elements can cause a website to no longer function properly.
Using the reader function
If you want to read the content of an article, you can better use the reader function. This keeps the website intact and temporarily opens a separate view in which you can read the article in peace.