I’m frustrated every day with the current state of mobile networks. I rarely read news articles on my iPhone now because every time I read, there is a cookie prompt blocking the content I want to read, or there are so many ads on the page that I can’t even see the text.
Apple is apparently as frustrated as I am, so it added a Thanos snap animation in iOS 18, eliminating an annoying part of the website.
The new “Distraction Control” feature appeared in Safari earlier this week in the fifth beta of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. It’s designed to allow you to temporarily remove annoying and distracting elements from your mobile website, including cookie prompts, ads, annoying auto-playing videos that track you as you scroll through the site, and more.
The animation is a beautiful homage to Thanos snapping his fingers, and it feels like I’m wielding all six Infinity Stones and snapping my fingers to destroy half the crap that exists on today’s action sites. I don’t feel guilty about it either. This is not an ad blocker, so it is only temporary and will not last. You’ll still be loading ads so that the site owner gets a view of the ads without causing any harm.
mike rumor There’s a great hands-on video demonstrating how it works, but I just wish there was an easier way to use distraction control. In the latest iOS 18 beta 5 build, you have to tap the same button used to enable Reader Mode (which also allows you to focus on text on a website) to be able to hide parts of a web page. It would be even more useful if there was a gesture to swipe these annoying ads away.
Unless Apple makes some last-minute changes to iOS 18, this new distraction control feature should be released as part of the final versions of iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, likely next month.
