Distraction Control in Safari

Safari gains an unannounced new feature called Distraction Control. This gives users the ability manually hide individual elements of a webpage. It’s my understanding that this a feature in the popular Arc Browser, but I haven’t personally used it yet. As mentioned, this is a manual action that only lasts for so long. Hidden elements will eventually re-enable. Wouldn’t surprise me if web developers eventually find a way to block this, the way some sites do Reader Mode.

Removal of Carousel in Photos

I find the Photos UI in iPadOS 18 is to be visually noisy. It doesn’t feel as simple as the previous UI, but on the other hand, seems to be more customizable. Reception to the design has apparently been mixed, and Apple is responding to feedback. The carousel at the top of the Photos app has been removed in beta 5. Its not clear if this is permanent, or if this is something Apple is looking to refine before re-introducing.

New Home screen Option

The home screen now has a debatably quick option for managing home screen pages. When you tap and on the home screen, then tap the “Edit” button, there’s now a new “Edit Pages” option that lets you quickly edit availability of your home pages. This is the same thing you can do today by tapping the page control when in jiggle mode.

Updated Dark Mode Icons

Icon tweaks continue across the betas. In beta 5, the Maps icon gets a new Dark Mode icon that removes most of the color from it (why?). The Find My icon gets a slightly improved dark mode icon with a little more detail, which is nice.