Safari: “Hide Distractions” also for older macOS versions.

A positive surprise for those who have installed Safari 18 on older Mac operating system versions such as Sonoma (macOS 14): a new function in the Apple browser is also activated for them. This is the so-called Hiding Distracting Items, also known in English as “Hiding Distracting Items”. This feature has since been dubbed “Web Eraser” or “Web Eraser Pen”.

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Fear of ad blockers

It has been known for months that the function was coming. There have already been regulatory complaints from publishers as they feared that Apple could implement an ad blocker by default in the system browser. The planned function raises questions about the extent to which Apple is strengthening its in-house advertising business in the App Store and Apple News with such a “web eraser”, it was said in May – although initially it was just a rumor .

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However, in practice, the main purpose of hiding distractions is to hide boxes that contain, for example, newsletters or GDPR requests. “Use Distraction Management to hide menus and other distractions on a website,” Apple writes in a nutshell in his help. The window that appears when you first activate it states that the feature “may not permanently remove ads or other content” because it is “frequently updated.” That means: masking only applies to areas that rarely change.

Integration into menus, including animation

In practice, to use it on a Mac you need to install Safari 18, which is available as a single download for macOS 14 and 13, otherwise it is part of macOS 15. The corresponding button is located next to the search field. There you can select “Hide distracting objects” and you will be shown the framed fields that can be hidden. They then disappear with a nice animation – and they should stay disappeared.

The elements can be managed later using the same menu. This shows how many fields are currently hidden. These can then be displayed again one at a time; a UI for changing individual elements does not currently exist. In the official WebKit blog, Apple lists More information,

(B.Sc.)