Safari Distraction Control
Safari’s newest feature, Distraction Control, can remove distracting elements from a website. The feature follows Arc Browser’s addition of Boosts last year, which similarly lets users remove features from a site and further customize its appearance.
Apple is rolling out the early version of the feature this week through new developer betas of iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia.
Users can access the Distraction Control tool from the Page Menu in the Smart Search field. They then select the item on the website they want to remove. Safari will remember to remove the elements the next time they visit the site. The choice doesn’t currently sync across hardware, however, so users will have to hide the elements on each new device.
Apple also emphasizes that this feature is not meant to serve as an ad blocker. While a user can technically use Distraction Control to hide an ad on a website temporarily, that ad will re-appear when the page is refreshed or otherwise reloaded. In fact, the first time a user activates Distraction Control, Safari will display a pop-up that emphasizes the feature will not permanently remove ads or other areas of a website that frequently change.
If a user chooses to hide something like a GDPR banner or a cookies request pop-up, Distraction Control behaves in the same way as if the user manually clicked to dismiss that pop-up. This means Distraction Control will serve as neither an “Accept” nor “Decline” for that cookies request.
I discovered that if you hide distracting items in a private window, your settings will be preserved in memory after closing the private window and applied to other private windows, but your settings won’t be applied to non-private windows or saved to disk.
However, if you hide distracting items in a non-private window, your settings will be saved to disk and also applied to private windows.
Your hidden item settings are stored on disk in ~/Library/Safari/UserDefinedContentBlockers.db on macOS. This is an SQLite database.
[…]
It appears to be using the Safari content blockers API. The db saves a website domain, a CSS selector, and a binary plist containing various other data[…]
Previously:
Update (2024-08-08): Marko Zivkovic:
Web Eraser was Apple’s built-in content-blocker, found in pre-release development builds of Safari 18. In speaking with people familiar with the matter, we learned that Web Eraser allowed users to select any page element on-screen, and “erase” it.
[…]
We were told that Web Eraser enabled the removal of virtually anything on-screen, from distracting banner ads to articles or even entire page sections.
So, why did Apple remove a Safari feature that was fully functional?
[…]
After AppleInsider’s original article on the subject was published, it caught the attention of major industry associations in the publishing and advertising sector. Following our reveal of the feature, mainstream media websites The Financial Times and Business Insider reported that the UK’s News Media Association and a group of French publishers had both sent complaints to Apple about Web Eraser in May.
Update (2024-09-20): John Voorhees:
My concerns about Distraction Control are twofold. First, static ads – like the kind of ads we display on MacStories – are often chosen because they are less disruptive than dynamic ads. Effectively, Apple is penalizing sites that use less distracting ads by making them easier to block long-term than the dynamic variety.
[…]
Second, Distraction Control is not very precise. If you try to hide the banner ad at the top of MacStories, it will wipe out the masthead and site navigation along with the banner. That’s a potential support nightmare we (and I suspect other sites) will have to deal with.
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The most interesting part of this is the framing and release approach that Apple chose for this feature.
As reported by AppleInsider, it originally may have been called Web Eraser and would have been announced as part of WWDC. There was backlash from news publications around this rumour which seems to have impacted the branding.
So instead of a broader 'Web Eraser' feature they have named it 'Distraction Control' to infer a more contained purpose and chose not to give it much publicity, instead choosing to announce it as part of a point release in the Safari / OS beta cycle. I would note that the name 'Distraction Control' is almost purposely chosen to be as unmemorable, inoffensive and indistinct as possible.
Likely that the feature will expand over time to both sync across devices using iCloud and be more intelligent in choosing the CSS selector of the elements.
As an ad blocker developer who has a similar feature – Tap to Block – it's always disconcerting, but not surprising, that Apple is moving into this feature set. At least for the time being Tap to Block syncs across all devices and intelligently determines optimal CSS selectors so it can be effectively used to block ads that aren't pick up by the in-built ad blocking rules.
I wrote about my fears of my app being 'sherlocked' by Apple in a recent "Year in Review" post:
https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/ad-blocker-year-in-review-2024/
At that stage I thought I would have at least another 12 months before Apple was to release the feature to the public. In reality it was only 2 or so months before it is available.
I cannot fathom Apple ever stomping over a cherished developer partner. Apple is a paragon of innovation. /s
Yeah, sorry about your troubles Matthew. It's a long standing tradition as you alluded to.
