Apple Intelligence: Hide Distracting Items in Safari

Technology is consistently entertaining new crazes. Some examples include blockchain, subscription juicers, netbooks, 3D televisions, hyperloop, and "hoverboards", just to name a handful of examples. All of these were going to be "the next big thing", but none of these have panned out as the inventors intended.

There has been a term bandied about that people think may be the end-all for computers. Said term is "Artificial Intelligence", or "AI". The term "AI" can mean a variety of different things, depending on whom you ask. However, when most use the term AI, what they are expecting is a fully conscious and sentient entity that can think, act, and rationalize as a human would. This is called "Artificial General Intelligence". Today's technology is nowhere even close to being able to come to this reality. It is not yet known whether or not Artificial Intelligence will actually live up to its ultimate expectations.

Apple is not known for being jumping on bandwagons and being the first to create new categories of technology; they typically leave that to others. However, if there is a technology that they can put their own spin on, they might do so. At their World Wide Developer Conference 24, they introduced one of these types of technologies, called "Apple Intelligence".

Apple Intelligence is not a single item; in fact, it goes against the grain of other AI assistants and only works on your data. Apple Intelligence consists of a variety of tools to help you accomplish a specific task. When introduced, Apple indicated that the initial features of Apple Intelligence would be released over the course of the iOS/iPad 18 and macOS Sequoia releases.

The items that comprise Apple Intelligence include: Writing Tools, Image Generation, and Personalized Requests. Initially, Apple wanted to have the first items available with iOS 18; however, during the beta, Apple realized that the features would not be far enough along for an initial iOS/iPadOS 18.0 and macOS Sequoia (15.0) release, so they were pushed to iOS/iPadOS 18.1 and macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Not every device that can run iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, or macOS Sequoia 15.1 is able to support Apple Intelligence. To be able to run Apple Intelligence you need to have one of the following devices:

• iPhone 16/Plus (A18)
• iPhone 16 Pro/Pro Max (A18 Pro)
• iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max (A17 Pro)
• iPad mini (A17 Pro or later)
• iPad Air (M1 or later)
• iPad Pro (M1 or later)
• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later)

The reason that these devices are the minimum is a combination of needing 8GB of memory, as well as a neural engine.

This article is part of an on-going series that covers the features of Apple Intelligence, as they become available. This article focuses on the Apple Intelligence feature called “Hide Distracting Items", within Safari.

The Modern Web

It is hard to imagine today's modern world without the internet. If we did not have the internet, It is entirely plausible that modern society would look incredibly different without the internet. When the internet began is was used merely as a means of sharing information, mostly by the U.S. government and universities. Of course, this would not last, and not long after the internet was created, regular users began joining the internet.

When non-academics and non-government people joined the internet, they began to communicate over bulletin-board systems, creating their own webpages, and their own sites. If you were online in the 1990s, it was a common refrain to hear "do not put your credit card into a site on the internet". Today, though, it is commonplace to do just that.

Running a website is not free, it msut be paid for in some manner. There are a variety of ways of supporting a website. Sometimes, it is with a direct payment, and other times sites are supported with donations. However, the most common method of websites generating revenue is through ads. But ads are not the only items you will encounter while on the web.

Distracting Items

There are those sites that care for their visitors and actually attempt to minimize the distractions that their visitors encounter. But, there are an increasing number of sits that will absolutely bombard you with a variety of items. This can include:

• Ads
• Autoplay videos
• Sign up for a newsletter
• Cookie popups
• Third-Party Sign in
• Use the app

And these are just a few. It is quite possible that you might encounter one, or all, of these on a site, and they can be quite distracting. With iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, there is a new feature that can help, at least within Safari.

Hiding Distracting Items

With Safari in iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia you can now use a feature called "Hide Distracting Items". The "Hide Distracting Items" feature is designed to, as the name indicates, hide distracting items on various webpages. This is not the same as a Content Blocker, but it can work in a similar manner.

Hide Distracting Items requires that you indicate which items are distracting, but this is a pretty straightfoward process. To enable Hide Distracting Items perform the following steps:

1. Open Safari.
2. Navigate to the website where you want to hide items.
3. Tap, or click, on the Square and three lines in the URL bar. This should bring up a menu.
4. Tap, or click, on "Hide Distracting Items".

When you tap on Hide Distracting Items an overlay will be shown. This overlay will highlight various elements on the page. You can click on the "Hide" to confirm that you want to hide the element. You can click on any number of items that you would like to hide and they should be hidden.

Once you have completed selecting the items that you want to hide, be sure to click, or tap, on the "Done" button to save your changes. You can also tap, or click, on "Cancel" to not save your changes.

Showing All Hidden Items

In the event that you accidentally end up hiding too many items and you have saved the changes, you can show all of previously hidden items by using the following steps:

1. Open Safari.
2. Navigate to the page you want to show the hidden items on.
3. Tap, or click, on the Square and three lines in the URL bar. This should bring up a menu.
4. Tap, or click, on the "Show Hidden Items" button.

Once you click on "Show Hidden Items", all previously hidden items will be shown. It should be noted that this will show ALL previously hidden items, not just from the latest session, but any element you hid. It is not an ideal situation to have to show all hidden items, but it is quite useful should you accidentally hide too many items.

Caveats

The Hide Distracting Items feature is pretty simple to use, but it is not always 100% correct. As an example, you could be attemping to hide a rather egrious ad on a webpage, only to have another ad appear in its place. This happens because of the nature of the Hide Distracting Items feature. It will do its best to consistently hide the items, but if the element id changes between page loads, it might not always hide the element.

Closing Thoughts on Hide Distracting Items

The modern web is chalkful of ads, popups, and just general distractions. It has not always been this way, but many are reluctant to pay for content, and instead of paying with money, you pay with attention and data. Apple has added a new feature to help with the former item; this is called Hide Distracting Items.

With "Hide Distracting Items" you can hide any element on a website. This could be an ad, a popup, or any other distracting item. This works in most situations, but it is foolproof and sometimes items that you have hidden will appear again. If you do manage to accidentally hide some elements on a webpage, you can undo all of them in one fell swoop.

Even though the feature does not work 100% of the time, it does work a majority of the time, so it may be worth exploring for those sites that are egregious with their ads and popups.

Be sure to check out all of the other articles in the series:

• Introduction to Apple Intelligence
• Apple Intelligence: Type with Siri
• Apple Intelligence: Summarization and Mail
• Apple Intelligence: Writing Tools
• Apple Intelligence: Clean Up in Photos

You can also check out all articles about Apple Intelligence