safari extension hush

Noiseless Browsing

By joel arvidsson.

Block nags to accept cookies and privacy
 invasive tracking in Safari on Mac, iPhone and iPad.

“I’d recommend Hush to anyone who uses Safari”

This website is using cookies, read more in our privacy policy that is too long and complicated for most to comprehend.

We care about your privacy

Not really though. That's why we made the process of opting out really difficult because we know nobody would opt in otherwise.

www.everywebsite.ever wants to annoy even after you leave by sending push notifications.

Sign up for our newsletter

You seem like the type that what to have spam sent to you on a regular basis, so we'll make sure to sell your address on to others.

Unlike some blockers, Hush has absolutely no access to your browser habits or passwords. Nor does it track behavior or collect crash reports - nothing leaves your device .

Everything is free of charge . Forever. No in-app purchases, no nonsense. However, any help towards covering the yearly Apple Developer fee is greatly appreciated.

The app is primarily a host of rules that integrates with Safari in a native, lightweight way , making the blocking efficient and fast.

It's as easy as downloading the app and enabling it in Safari settings ⭢ Extensions . No configuration or maintenance needed.

Open Source

The source code is available on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.

Hush is written in Apple's latest programming paradigm Swift UI and has native support for M1 processors.

The app download clocks in at less than half a megabyte.

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🤫 Noiseless Browsing – Content Blocker for Safari

oblador/hush

Folders and files, repository files navigation.

Block nags to accept cookies and privacy invasive tracking in Safari

I’d recommend Hush to anyone who uses Safari

– John Gruber, Daring Fireball 23 January 2021

Hush is private, free and fast – read more on the website .

Requires iOS 14 or later.

Requires macOS 11 or later. Direct download .

Screenshots

Unlike some blockers, Hush has absolutely no access to your browser habits or passwords. Nor does it track behavior or collect crash reports - nothing leaves your device.

Everything is free of charge. Forever. No in-app purchases, no nonsense. However, any help towards covering the yearly Apple Developer fee is greatly appreciated.

The app is primarily a host of rules that integrates with Safari in a native, lightweight way, making the blocking efficient and fast.

It's as easy as downloading the app and enabling it in Safari settings ⭢ Content Blockers. No configuration or maintenance needed.

Open Source

The source code is published under the permissive MIT license.

Hush is written in Apple's latest programming paradigm Swift UI and has native support for M1 processors.

The app download clocks in at less than half a megabyte.

Does Hush accept or deny permission to site cookies?

Neither! Hush will block specific scripts and elements on the website, but can't and won't interact with the website itself and thus won't click on any buttons. According to GDPR laws the user needs to explicitly consent to non-essential cookies and tracking.

Can't websites still use cookies/tracking without my consent?

Absolutely, being compliant and respecting your choices is up to the website owners. It's possible to block all cookies, but that also breaks a lot of websites. I personally use incognito mode so I don't have to trust website owners' good intents and implementations, but that means they constantly "forget" my cookie choices. Ergo Hush.

Does it block ads?

Hush doesn't block ads on purpose. Nobody wants to read nor display cookie notices. But ads – however annoying – might be crucial for makers and businesses on the internet and I don't want to steal their lunch.

Why does website X display nags with Hush enabled?

On some sites it's not possible to block/hide cookie notices or tracking consent screens without also breaking the site. Other sites have obfuscations in place to prevent blocking. Regardless, you may open an issue on GitHub or fill in a form to report it.

Why does website X break with Hush enabled?

First ensure that it's actually Hush breaking it by disabling it in settings and reloading the page. If it works after this, please report it by opening an issue.

Building from source

To build the app in Xcode, you need to have deno installed first:

Contributing

Run blocklist unit tests with:

Run UI tests with:

Compile blocklist only with (part of Xcode build):

Hush: MIT License . © Joel Arvidsson 2020-present

Fanboy List : CC BY 3.0 . © Rick Petnel and contributors 2005

Sponsor this project

Contributors 6.

• JavaScript 50.9%
• Swift 45.8%
• Makefile 3.3%

Hush Nag Blocker 4+

Block cookie and tracking nags.

• 4.7 • 242 Ratings

Screenshots

Description.

Browse the web like it should be – free of nags to accept cookies or privacy invasive tracking. It's tiny, fast, free, open, secure and without any access to your data. “I’d recommend Hush to anyone who uses Safari” — John Gruber, Daring Fireball SECURE AND PRIVATE Hush doesn't have any third party dependencies, behavioral tracking nor crash reporting – no data is collected and nothing leaves your device. The blocking is done by Safari itself with instructions from Hush, so the app has no access to your browser habits nor does it want to. Don't take our word for it – we play with open cards and publish the source code for anyone to inspect. SIMPLE YET POWERFUL Using Hush is as easy as installing it and enabling it in Preferences -> Extensions. No settings, no maintenance – just thousands of rules doing the hard work for you in the background. It works like magic – you will not notice Hush until you disable it. MODERN, TINY AND FAST The app is primarily a host of rules that integrates with Safari in a native lightweight way, making the blocking efficient, fast and easy on your disk space. FREE AND OPEN Hush is both free of charge and Open Source with a permissive MIT license. No in-app purchases, no nonsense. AVAILABLE ON ALL DEVICES Hush is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Version 1.0.13

- More nags blocked and fixes to partially broken websites.

Ratings and Reviews

242 Ratings

Thank you, truly a lifesaver

I had to thank you for this app, it’s great work. Ad blocker wasn’t handling cookie prompts any longer and they are a frustrating mess that ruins the internet and makes for a horrible browsing environment. Just short of blocking all cookies in Safari or some other drastic measure, I took a quick look and this app came highly recommended. In a few days of use on the phone and the iPad it’s a huge relief for them to just be gone. Completely gone. So Hush, a good ad blocker and private browsing is a beautiful thing. I am completely sick and tired of endless cookie prompts, settings, and constant deleting. I’m still about to flip the switch and block them all and just let sites break, as cookies truly do need to die. Thank you again, much appreciated, and keep it up!

Doesn’t work most of the time

Often doesn’t work. I feel it’s are only updated when the app is updated, not dynamically via url like so many others. I’ve used this for about two months now and the sites that I’ve reported as slipping through the cracks (a bunch) have yet to be blocked. And in those cases, this app actually prevents me from proceeding past the consent pop up. As for the description, it’s not really clear what this app is doing. there’s no documentation or much of any explanation of what’s going on behind-the-scenes. The only real source of anything is a GitHub link. and once you navigate around and find the developers biographical page or about me section, one of the first things I noticed was that he says he doesn’t have time to invest in his projects. So…. This isn’t a money-making tool. I get that. It would be nice to know upfront more about the app I’m downloading, how it works, how often it is or isn’t updated, etc. After looking around on the repository, I see that it is working very much the same way as Easylist and incorporates the fanboy list. It just doesn’t look like it updates these filters dynamically, only when they are integrated directly into the app update, which it looks like it was more than two months ago.

Does its job silently and well!

I was doing some manual updates in the store today, saw this app, couldn’t remember its purpose, and so read the description. I was flabbergasted when I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been asked whether I agree to platesful of cookies being loaded onto my devices! I’d completely forgotten how those things usta drive me out of my mind! Thanks to Hush, I’ve not been bothered by those things since downloading it. It obviously does its job silently and well. Aside from apps that do their jobs in delightful ways that make life easier, the next best kind are those apps that do their jobs behind the scenes and and do them so perfectly that we forget they’re there, and Hush falls into the latter category. This makes it a little difficult for us to appreciate them (especially for those of us with memory problems), but that’s hardly a complaint! If you’re also tired of being asked about cookies every time you open a new site, you’re gonna love Hush: you download it, load it once, and then *literally* forget about it! Your life is improved, and it cost you nothing, neither in one or brain cells. Excellent job, developers! 👏🏻 Way to go!

App Privacy

The developer, Oblador AB , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

Data Not Collected

The developer does not collect any data from this app.

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

• Developer Website
• App Support
• Privacy Policy

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Tired of Nonstop Cookie Popups? Dismiss Them Automatically with These Extensions

by Austin MacWorks | Oct 12, 2023 | iPad , iPhone , Privacy | 0 comments

For many years, the European Union has required that websites—at least those serving European users—gain informed consent before storing the personal data of those users. That data includes cookies , which are bits of information stored in Web browsers that websites can read and write. Cookies are widely used for remembering login information, saving user account information, maintaining a shopping cart, and other legitimate purposes. However, they’re also used to target advertising at you by tracking your behavior across websites, which many people consider to be an invasion of user privacy. Hence the EU’s ePrivacy Directive , which resulted in the proliferation of cookie consent popups like this one.

Websites that rely on advertising or user tracking prefer that everyone click Accept All, but because of the EU requirement for informed consent, they have to tell you more about the cookies they use, explain why they want to use them, and allow you to reject types of cookies. Clicking Customize in the cookie consent popup above presents this expanded view. So many details!

On the one hand, thanks to the EU for working to safeguard user privacy. Without laws like the ePrivacy Directive and the overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Web would be even more of a sausage factory that grinds up and sells our personal data.

On the other hand, could cookie consent popups on nearly every website be any more annoying?!? While it’s a nice idea that we provide informed consent for cookies, few people have the time and inclination to read all this and make an informed decision. If you’re like us, you’re probably mashing Reject All as fast as you can. And even that is more effort than you’d prefer to expend.

Happily, there are Web browser extensions that can simplify your life, responding to cookie consent popups automatically using preferences you set once. Why can’t Web browsers do this themselves? They could, and the privacy-focused Brave does , but the W3C’s Platform for Privacy Preferences working group’s recommendations for standardizing behavior around privacy were ignored by browser makers and dropped back in 2006.

Two browser extensions we’ve tested successfully in multiple Mac browsers are Consent-O-Matic and Super Agent . They work by learning how to interact with the common consent popups (many of which come from Consent Management Platforms like Osano and CookieYes ) and automatically clicking the switches to match your preferences. More specifically, the Hush extension blocks cookie consent popups in Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Consent-O-Matic

The open-source Consent-O-Matic is free from privacy researchers at Aarhus University. It comes as a Chrome extension that works with Google Chrome (and other Chromium browsers like Arc, Brave, and Edge, shown below), as an add-on for Firefox, and as an extension for Safari on the Mac and Safari in iOS and iPadOS. Consent-O-Matic works reasonably well on the Mac; in testing, we found it wasn’t effective enough in Safari on the iPhone and iPad to be worth installing. Installation and interface vary by browser—the Chrome extension is shown below.

By default, Consent-O-Matic allows no cookies, though we recommend enabling the Preferences and Functionality option and, if you’re feeling generous toward websites, the Performance and Analytics option. The first option improves your experience on any site where it’s helpful for it to remember information about you, and the second allows the website admins to collect metrics on how the site is being used. If a site doesn’t work correctly with Consent-O-Matic enabled, you can turn off the extension for just that site. In the Display preferences, you can choose whether Consent-O-Matic minimizes consent popups or hides them entirely, and on the About screen, you’ll see how many clicks it has saved you.

Super Agent

Super Agent seems to focus its paid plans on its version for the iPhone and iPad, but we didn’t find it effective enough there to install. On the Mac, however, Super Agent is free and works well, perhaps a bit more so than Consent-O-Matic. It’s available as a Chrome extension for Google Chrome and other Chromium browsers, as a Firefox add-on, and as a Safari extension. Installation and interface vary by browser—the Chrome extension is shown below.

Your first task in Super Agent is to set your preferences for cookies to accept. Again, we recommend enabling Functional cookies; turn on Performance cookies if you wish. Leave Advertising and Other cookies off.

Although it’s not required, you can create a Super Agent account and enable the Consent Trail switch to see a list of the sites whose cookie consent popups Super Agent filled out for you. It’s end-to-end encrypted so that only you can see the data, but if you’re particularly concerned about privacy, don’t turn it on.

What about the iPhone and iPad, or those who care only about Safari on the Mac? We recommend Joel Arvidsson’s Hush , which bills itself as a nag blocker. It’s a free download from the App Store, and once it’s on your device, you enable it in Settings > Safari > Extensions > Hush (iOS/iPadOS) or Safari > Settings > Extensions (Mac).

That’s it. From then on, it silently blocks cookie consent popups—it doesn’t attempt to register your preferences like Consent-O-Matic and Super Agent. As a result, it might cause problems if a site requires that you accept some cookies for it to function correctly. We haven’t encountered such a site yet, but it’s not impossible. If that happens on an iPhone or iPad, tap the A A button in the Safari address bar and then Turn On Content Blockers; on the Mac, choose View > Reload Without Content Blockers.

The Web is an ever-evolving place, so there’s no guarantee that these extensions will respond to or block every cookie consent popup. But you can report missed sites to the Content-O-Matic and Super Agent developers, and Joel Arvidsson releases regular updates to block more nags and fix partially broken websites.

If you use only Safari for Web browsing, Hush could be all you need on all your Apple devices. Those who rely on other Web browsers on the Mac can pick either Consent-O-Matic or Super Agent to supplement Hush on the iPhone and iPad.

(Featured image by iStock.com/Pla2na)

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Hush: A Free and Open Source Content Blocker Written Specifically for Safari

When I think of contenct blockers, I immediately think of uBlock Origin ( which is so much more than  just  a content blocker but, for the sake of this article, let’s pretend it’s just  that ). Unfortunately, Safari users can’t enjoy the benefits of such an extension anymore. Why? Because Apple won’t allow it…

uBlock Origin was ported to Safari in 2016, and was updated regulary until 2018 when development completley stopped because Apple started to phase out Safari extensions.

With the release of macOS Mojave and Safari 12, legacy Safari extensions were still allowed, but they came with a warning saying that they will slow down your browser experience. Which wasn’t true. At least not in the case of uBlock Origin.  Apple also shut down their Safari extension gallary, redirecting users to the Mac App Store.

Instead, Apple, started to implement a new extensions framework that is extremley limited in adblocking functions, only allowing “content blockers” ( which are just links bundled as an app which Safari enforces ) .

Since then Apple has begun phasing out Safari extensions as extensions, and has instead been implenting a new extensions framework which is extremley limited in adblocking functions, only allowing “content blockers”, which are just links bundled as an app which Safari enforces.

Which takes me to Hush … a free and open source content blocker, specifically written for Safari ( using SwiftUI ).

• Private – Unlike some blockers, Hush has absolutely no access to your browser habits or passwords. Nor does it track behavior or collect crash reports – nothing leaves your device.
• Free – Everything is free of charge. Forever. No in-app purchases, no nonsense. However, any help towards covering the yearly Apple Developer fee is greatly appreciated.
• Fast – The app is primarily a host of rules that integrates with Safari in a native, lightweight way, making the blocking efficient and fast.
• Simple – It’s as easy as downloading the app and enabling it in Safari settings. No configuration or maintenance needed.
• Open Source – The source code is published under the permissive MIT license.
• Modern – Hush is written in Apple’s latest programming paradigm Swift UI and has native support for M1 processors.
• Tiny – The app download clocks in at less than half a megabyte.

Not only that but Hush works on both macOS and iOS. However, here’s the catch…. Hush requires you to run macOS Big Sur and iOS 14.

If you’re a Safari users and want to start blocking cookie notices, annoying popovers that ask you to join newsletters and other annoyances,  download Hush for iOS from the App Store and macOS from the Mac App Store ( or direct download ) and enable it:

• on iOS go to Settings > Safari > Content Blockers
• on macOS, enable it in Safari’s Preferences

How to block newsletter pop-ups on your browser

Tired of dismissing newsletter prompts on a website? Use these browser extensions to block them.

Most websites make us jump through several hoops to access them. Though our browsers are equipped to take care of the auto-playing videos and other pop-ups, we still have to manually dismiss the pesky overlay asking if we’d like to subscribe to the website’s newsletter. With a few tweaks, though, you can automatically block email and newsletter banners too. 

The reason your browser’s pop-up blocker isn’t enough to kill newsletter overlays is that they’re programmed differently. They don’t launch a new window or take you away from the page you’re on like a pop-up. So you’ll need something else to deal with them and fortunately, whether you’re on your phone or computer, there are plenty of options. Here’s how to block email and newsletter prompts on your browser. 

Block newsletter pop-ups on Safari (Mac, iPhone) 

On an Apple device like a MacBook , an iPad, or an iPhone, your best defense against newsletter overlays is a Safari extension called Hush . 

At first glance, Hush may seem almost too basic to be effective. It’s small in size, has no menus for you to manage, and runs in the background with zero effect on your computer or phone’s performance. As the name suggests, Hush is designed to squash the endless nagging elements that ruin your internet experience, and that includes, of course, newsletter notices that block you from the rest of the website until you enter your email address or close them. 

As soon as you download Hush, it begins automatically obstructing a website’s ability to throw newsletter overlays at you. There’s no setup process, nor do you have to pay extra to enable any additional features. Plus, it’s open-source, which means there’s little risk of it spying on you or selling your browsing data. 

In addition to the newsletter and email banners, Hush prevents websites from deploying a host of other invasive activities. It can also save you the trouble of agreeing to those nagging cookie consent pop-ups by blocking them altogether and banning third-party trackers that websites use to secretly follow you across the web. 

Hush is free and you can download it on your iPhone , iPad, and Mac from the App Store. 

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Block newsletter pop-ups on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox (Mac, Windows PC) 

Hush is only available for Safari. If you’re on Google Chrome , or any Chromium browser like Microsoft Edge , or Mozilla Firefox, you can turn to an extension called PopUpOff to get rid of newsletter overlays. 

PopUpOff works similarly to Hush, in that it can automatically prevent websites from nagging you to subscribe to their newsletters. However, it’s a little more hands-on and offers you a bunch of options to control the experience. 

The tech newsletter overlays rely on often powers useful elements which you may not want to ban, like a sign-in form or navigation menus. To ensure your efforts to block newsletter banners don’t break the rest of a website, PopUpOff comes with three modes to choose from: 

• “Dormant” for sites you trust and don’t want to modify.
• “Moderate” for removing annoying prompts like newsletter forms without affecting any essential elements.
• “Aggressive” for especially invasive pages with one too many pop-ups.  

Like Hush, in the Moderate and Aggressive modes, PopUpOff also cuts down a handful of more nagging elements from websites such as cookie consent pop-ups. 

Once you download PopUpOff on your browser, it kicks off the Dormant function, which means it will only come into action when you ask it to. For the best results, switch the default mode to Moderate by right-clicking the PopUpOff icon at the top right corner, and heading into Options > Auto Mode. You can always exclude a website when PopUpOff causes it to behave erratically by clicking its icon and selecting “Dormant.” 

From the “Options” page, you can even set custom keyboard shortcuts for switching between the three modes, and customize how strict the “Moderate” mode is. In my experience, though, the default “Moderate” setting is plenty to ward off most newsletter banners without risking affecting a website’s layout. 

PopUpOff is not perfect for me, as it usually fails to do its job on at least one out of four websites. For those instances, I’d recommend pairing it up with another free extension called “ Behind the Overlay ,” which though doesn’t block newsletter banners, allows you to easily dismiss any overlay with a click or a dedicated keyboard shortcut. 

Use reading mode on an Android phone

We couldn’t find an extension tailored to prevent newsletter banners for Android phones. However, as an Android user, what I do now is take advantage of Google’s Reading Mode app to circumvent any prompts or pop-ups to read a website’s content. 

Reading Mode adds a permanent floating button to your screen that you can hit anytime to consume the article you’re trying to access in a distraction-free interface. You can even ask the app to dictate it and personalize the text’s font, color, background, and size. 

Once you download Reading Mode from the Play Store, all you have to do is grant it the necessary accessibility permission, and you’ll soon find a little hovering blue button on the edge of your screen. Whenever you come across an article you’d like to remove distractions from, just touch that button, and the app will launch it in reading mode. 

Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India. His work has previously appeared in Business Insider, Fast Company, HuffPost, and more. You can reach out to him on  Twitter . 

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Best cookie consent pop-up blockers for Apple Safari

The cookie consent pop-blocker extension, Super Agent for Safari, is no longer free to use, it now has a subscription model. Here are some free alternatives that you may want to try instead.

The new Super Agent Unlimited plans start at $1.19 per month, or $11.99 for the annual subscription. There is an option for a one-time fee that costs $29.99. That's a little too expensive for the job it does. While it is a useful tool, the extension is not unique, there are some extensions that do the job perfectly fine, and without a price tag.

Hush is probably the most user-friendly of the choices here, as it has no settings whatsoever. All you need to do is to install the extension, and it will block all cookie warning banners on websites, with no action required from your end. Hush is available for iOS, iPadOS and macOS. It is free and open source , you can download Hush for Safari from the App Store .

Consent-O-Matic

Consent-O-Matic is also quite user-friendly, it requires a one-time permission to allow access to all sites that you visit. This is required for the extension to detect and block the cookie consent pop-ups and save your preference in the cookies. You may optionally choose to allow it to run on specific sites only. Once you have you granted it the permission, it blocks the cookie prompts automatically. The add-on places an icon on Safari's toolbar to indicate whether it blocked the banner or not.

Consent-O-Matic has some options that you may customize, should you want to allow websites access to some data. The add-on blocks these by default, so if you don't plan on letting sites collect tracking data, then you're good to go.

The extension free, open source , and is developed by members of the Aarhus University in Denmark. Download Consent-O-Matic from the App Store. It is also available for Firefox and Chrome .

AdGuard for Safari

uBlock Origin is not available for Apple's Safari browser, which in my opinion, makes AdGuard the best free content blocker for the browser. Aside from its ad blocking capabilities for which it is renowned for, the add-on can also be used to prevent various other annoyances, which includes cookie consent pop-ups.

To do this, first install the app, and run it. Switch to the Filters tab, and scroll down to the Annoyances section, and click on the button next to it to toggle the filter. This will enable several annoyances filters, including one called "AdGuard Cookie Notices filter", that will block the cookie consent pop-ups on web pages.

Download AdGuard for Safari for free from the App Store, the extension is open source .

Note: If you find that Safari extensions are not working properly after an OS update, you may want to reinstall the add-on. It happens to me on iOS with AdGuard failing to block ads, this is a known problem with the OS.

Of course, you can also switch from Safari to a different browser like Firefox , Brave or Vivaldi, to block cookie dialogs and banners automatically once you enable the option. Moving to one of these browsers will also allow you to use uBlock Origin, and various other benefits that you may find useful.

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Sadly there has been little activity on the github page for the extension “I still don’t care about cookies” but I believe someone (Sam-Spencer) is working on a safari version or something and is in testing. I don’t have any association with any apple product of relevancy so I can’t comment but I guess it would be nice if it did make it’s way to apple products.

Thank you @Ashwin for letting us now all these curious things about the Apple world! :]

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Tired of Nonstop Cookie Popups? Dismiss Them with These Extensions

by MacEdge | Oct 16, 2023 | Blog

The European Union has for many years required that websites—at least those serving European users—gain informed consent before storing the personal data of those users. That data includes cookies , which are bits of information stored in Web browsers that websites can read and write. Cookies are widely used for remembering login information, saving user account information, maintaining a shopping cart, and other legitimate purposes. However, they’re also used to target advertising at you by tracking your behavior across websites, which many people consider to be an abuse of user privacy. Hence the EU’s ePrivacy Directive , which resulted in the proliferation of cookie consent popups like this one.

Websites that rely on advertising or user tracking prefer that everyone click Accept All, but because of the EU requirement for informed consent, they have to tell you more about the cookies they use, explain why they want to use them, and allow you to reject types of cookies. Clicking Customize in the cookie consent popup above presents this expanded view. So many details!

On the one hand, thanks to the EU for working to safeguard user privacy. Without laws like the ePrivacy Directive and the overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Web would be even more of a sausage factory that grinds up and sells our personal data.

On the other hand, could cookie consent popups on nearly every website be any more annoying?!? While it’s a nice idea that we provide informed consent for cookies, few people have the time and inclination to read all this and make an informed decision. If you’re like us, you’re probably mashing Reject All as fast as you can. And even that is more effort than you’d prefer to expend.

Happily, there are Web browser extensions that can simplify your life, responding to cookie consent popups automatically using preferences you set once. Why can’t Web browsers do this themselves? They could, and the privacy-focused Brave does , but the W3C’s Platform for Privacy Preferences working group’s recommendations for standardizing behavior around privacy were ignored by browser makers and dropped back in 2006.

Two browser extensions we’ve tested successfully in multiple Mac browsers are Consent-O-Matic and Super Agent . They work by learning how to interact with the common consent popups (many of which come from Consent Management Platforms like Osano and CookieYes ) and automatically clicking the switches to match your preferences. More specifically, the Hush extension blocks cookie consent popups in Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Consent-O-Matic

The open-source Consent-O-Matic is free from privacy researchers at Aarhus University. It comes as a Chrome extension that works with Google Chrome (and other Chromium browsers like Arc, Brave, and Edge, shown below), as an add-on for Firefox, and as an extension for Safari on the Mac and Safari in iOS and iPadOS. Consent-O-Matic works reasonably well on the Mac; in testing, it wasn’t effective enough in Safari on the iPhone and iPad to be worth installing. Installation and interface vary by browser—the Chrome extension is shown below.

By default, Consent-O-Matic allows no cookies, though we recommend enabling the Preferences and Functionality option and, if you’re feeling generous toward websites, the Performance and Analytics option. The first option improves your experience on any site where it’s helpful for it to remember information about you, and the second allows the website admins to collect metrics on how the site is being used. If a site doesn’t work correctly with Consent-O-Matic enabled, you can turn off the extension for just that site. In the Display preferences, you can choose whether Consent-O-Matic minimizes consent popups or hides them entirely, and on the About screen, you’ll see how many clicks it has saved you.

Super Agent

Super Agent seems to focus its paid plans on its version for the iPhone and iPad, but we didn’t find it effective enough there to install. On the Mac, however, Super Agent is free and works well, perhaps a bit more so than Consent-O-Matic. It’s available as a Chrome extension for Google Chrome and other Chromium browsers, as a Firefox add-on, and as a Safari extension. Installation and interface vary by browser—the Chrome extension is shown below.

Your first task in Super Agent is to set your preferences for cookies to accept. Again, we recommend enabling Functional cookies; turn on Performance cookies if you wish. Leave Advertising and Other cookies off.

Although it’s not required, you can create a Super Agent account and enable the Consent Trail switch to see a list of the sites whose cookie consent popups Super Agent filled out for you. It’s end-to-end encrypted so that only you can see the data, but if you’re particularly concerned about privacy, don’t turn it on.

What about the iPhone and iPad, or those who care only about Safari on the Mac? We recommend Joel Arvidsson’s Hush , which bills itself as a nag blocker. It’s a free download from the App Store, and once it’s on your device, you enable it in Settings > Safari > Extensions > Hush (iOS/iPadOS) or Safari > Settings > Extensions (Mac).

That’s it. From then on, it silently blocks cookie consent popups—it doesn’t attempt to register your preferences like Consent-O-Matic and Super Agent. As a result, it might cause problems if a site requires that you accept some cookies for it to function correctly. We haven’t encountered such a site yet, but it’s not impossible. If that happens on an iPhone or iPad, tap the A A button in the Safari address bar and then Turn On Content Blockers; on the Mac, choose View > Reload Without Content Blockers.

The Web is an ever-evolving place, so there’s no guarantee that these extensions will respond to or block every cookie consent popup. But you can report missed sites to the Content-O-Matic and Super Agent developers, and Joel Arvidsson releases regular updates to block more nags and fix partially broken websites.

If you use only Safari for Web browsing, Hush could be all you need on all your Apple devices. Those who rely on other Web browsers on the Mac can pick either Consent-O-Matic or Super Agent to supplement Hush on the iPhone and iPad.

Thanks for reading the MacEdge blog.

How To : Block Those Annoying Cookie Consent Notices from Appearing on Websites in Safari

As a means to combat annoying and intrusive advertisements in Safari , Apple added native support for content blockers on the iPhone. Instead of being bombarded by notifications, banners, and pop-ups, content blockers prevent them from opening, which can also be said about those annoying cookie consent notices that many websites now have.

Anytime you visit a website, a cookie file is saved on your device that contains information about the website and you, including a unique ID and personally identifiable information such as your name, email address, and phone number. The website then uses this cookie whenever you visit the next time so that they can uniquely tailor this experience to you. For example, if you've placed a few things in your shopping cart, this information is stored in your cookies, so the next time you go to the website, these products may still be in your cart.

Not everyone is okay with how companies track important information via cookies. So the European Union passed a law called the GDPR , which essentially requires websites to get your consent before collecting your data. That's why you may see websites asking for permission to your cookies with annoying banners that sometimes take up the entire page.

• Don't Miss: How to Block Popups in Safari on Your iPhone

Not every cookie consent banner is the same, however. On some websites, you must accept all cookies to continue using them. On others, you have choices for which types of cookies to allow. Some allow you to ignore the banner and won't collect your information. And then there are websites that have cookie consent banners to let you know about their cookie policy, and it will still collect your information even if you ignore it.

If you don't care about cookie policies, you probably ignore these banners. And if you do, content blockers can help you block these banners so that they don't appear in the first place. Although the website may still collect your information, you no longer have to worry about these cookie consent notices filling up your page. And as a bonus, it won't block ads so that you can continue to support the sites you visit.

Step 1: Install the 'Hush for Safari' App

"Hush for Safari," created by developer Oblador AB , is a simple yet powerful service that blocks those annoying consent notices asking you to accept cookies whenever you visit a new website. The app works as a content blocker (without blocking ads), so it simply guides Safari to hide these notifications without asking for access to your private information, unlike other blockers.

You can check out its App Store listing or even its source code to ensure that they're not tracking or collecting your data.

• App Store Link: Hush for Safari (free)

Step 2: Add It to Safari's Content Blockers

Before you can use Hush for Safari, you must first toggle it on as a Safari content blocker. To do so, launch the Settings app and go into "Safari." Next, scroll down and tap on "Content Blockers" under General . If you don't see "Content Blockers," it's because you don't have a content blocker installed on your iPhone (so make sure Hush has downloaded all the way).

In Content Blockers , you should see Hush for Safari listed as "Hush." Tap on its toggle to enable it. You don't even need to open the app itself, although you should see whether it's enabled or disabled if you do.

Step 3: Browse Safari Without Cookie Consent Notices

Now, whenever you visit a new website, i.e., a website you have never visited before, you should no longer see cookie consent notices. Below you can see the European Space Agency website with a cookie consent notice (left) and without one when Hush for Safari is enabled (right).

In case you want cookie consent notices back, to see which websites track your cookies, go back to Settings –> Safari –> Content Blockers, then toggle off Hush.

Just updated your iPhone? You'll find new features for TV, Messages, News, and Shortcuts, as well as important bug fixes and security patches. Find out what's new and changed on your iPhone with the iOS 17.6 update.

Hush blocks this webpage. ??

Why didn't the bureaucrats who dream up their wonderful-make-our-lives-better-by-making-them-more-complicated-and-insufferable stuff make an exception for having websites that have THREE cookies only - username and password and a third one that I suppose might be useful for this - a "areYouRegisted" flag, a "doYouWantTwoFactorAuthenticationAndWhichEmailAddressToUseForIt", "preferredDisplayName", "preferredLanguage" - something. Limit these to whatever a reasonable length would be (20 Unicode characters probably - make that 64 or 128 bytes). I guess you might want to require the "sign up page" to include a warning, "This website will use a cookie to store your username and password ONLY".

Yes, it could maybe be abused. But the system already CAN be abused (that's why the GDRF exists, right?) Of course, Liberals (capital L only) don't seem to understand the phrase "compliance cost". And the fact that it applies to BOTH "producers" and "consumers" - an "annoyance factor". And before "they" say, "that doesn't matter".. Aren't they the same ones starting to finally whine about screen-time and distractions and such? (Don't get me started on over-signage on US streets possibly CAUSING more accidents.)

(Though it should already have a preferred display name and language. I suppose this would be if you had a website that could function with only making ONE server request - on login, that's it. But the people who hire web programmers don't care about efficiency, and must assume we ALL have OC-768 lines directly into the companies' server farm - and no one else on that farm when your accessing it)

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Save private bookmarks in incognito mode with our free  Chrome extension Firefox extension Edge extension browser extension . Download Download Download Download for Chrome

View and back up your bookmarks from all your devices with hush pro. $1/month or $9/year, the premier private bookmarking service.

If you’re using a shared computer or just like to keep some bookmarks private, Hush gives you a way to hide and show a special list of bookmarks just in Incognito Mode. Alan Henry,  Lifehacker

Perfect for those times when you’re sharing a PC and don’t want people finding out what you’ve been up to… Abhimanyu Ghoshal,  Lifehacker India

Like an elaborate tagging system ... effective at preventing other users from finding your stash of secret gift ideas. Eric Ravenscraft,  Lifehacker Australia

Tired of Nonstop Cookie Popups? Dismiss Them Automatically with These Extensions.

The European Union has for many years required that websites—at least those serving European users—gain informed consent before storing the personal data of those users. That data includes  cookies , which are bits of information stored in Web browsers that websites can read and write. Cookies are widely used for remembering login information, saving user account information, maintaining a shopping cart, and other legitimate purposes. However, they’re also used to target advertising at you by tracking your behavior across websites, which many people consider to be an abuse of user privacy. Hence the EU’s  ePrivacy Directive , which resulted in the proliferation of cookie consent popups like this one.

Websites that rely on advertising or user tracking prefer that everyone click Accept All, but because of the EU requirement for informed consent, they have to tell you more about the cookies they use, explain why they want to use them, and allow you to reject types of cookies. Clicking Customize in the cookie consent popup above presents this expanded view. So many details!

On the one hand, thanks to the EU for working to safeguard user privacy. Without laws like the ePrivacy Directive and the overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Web would be even more of a sausage factory that grinds up and sells our personal data.  On the other hand, could cookie consent popups on nearly every website be any more annoying?!? While it’s a nice idea that we provide informed consent for cookies, few people have the time and inclination to read all this and make an informed decision. If you’re like us, you’re probably mashing Reject All as fast as you can. And even that is more effort than you’d prefer to expend. Happily, there are Web browser extensions that can simplify your life, responding to cookie consent popups automatically using preferences you set once. Why can’t Web browsers do this themselves? They could, and the privacy-focused Brave does, but the W3C’s  Platform for Privacy Preferences  working group’s recommendations for standardizing behavior around privacy were ignored by browser makers and dropped back in 2006. Two browser extensions we’ve tested successfully in multiple Mac browsers are  Consent-O-Matic  and  Super Agent . They work by learning how to interact with the common consent popups (many of which come from Consent Management Platforms like  Osano  and  CookieYes ) and automatically clicking the switches to match your preferences. More specifically, the  Hush  extension blocks cookie consent popups in Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. ​

Consent-o-matic, the open-source  consent-o-matic  is free from privacy researchers at aarhus university. it comes as a chrome extension that works with google chrome (and other chromium browsers like arc, brave, and edge, shown below), as an add-on for firefox, and as an extension for safari on the mac and safari in ios and ipados. consent-o-matic works reasonably well on the mac; in testing, it wasn’t effective enough in safari on the iphone and ipad to be worth installing. installation and interface vary by browser—the chrome extension is shown below. by default, consent-o-matic allows no cookies, though we recommend enabling the preferences and functionality option and, if you’re feeling generous toward websites, the performance and analytics option. the first option improves your experience on any site where it’s helpful for it to remember information about you, and the second allows the website admins to collect metrics on how the site is being used. if a site doesn’t work correctly with consent-o-matic enabled, you can turn off the extension for just that site. in the display preferences, you can choose whether consent-o-matic minimizes consent popups or hides them entirely, and on the about screen, you’ll see how many clicks it has saved you..

Super Agent

Super agent  seems to focus its paid plans on its version for the iphone and ipad, but we didn’t find it effective enough there to install. on the mac, however, super agent is free and works well, perhaps a bit more so than consent-o-matic. it’s available as a chrome extension for google chrome and other chromium browsers, as a firefox add-on, and as a safari extension. installation and interface vary by browser—the chrome extension is shown below. your first task in super agent is to set your preferences for cookies to accept. again, we recommend enabling functional cookies; turn on performance cookies if you wish. leave advertising and other cookies off..

Although it’s not required, you can create a Super Agent account and enable the Consent Trail switch to see a list of the sites whose cookie consent popups Super Agent filled out for you. It’s end-to-end encrypted so that only you can see the data, but if you’re particularly concerned about privacy, don’t turn it on.

What about the iPhone and iPad, or those who care only about Safari on the Mac? We recommend Joel Arvidsson’s Hush , which bills itself as a nag blocker. It’s a  free download  from the App Store, and once it’s on your device, you enable it in Settings > Safari > Extensions > Hush (iOS/iPadOS) or Safari > Settings > Extensions (Mac). That’s it. From then on, it silently blocks cookie consent popups—it doesn’t attempt to register your preferences like Consent-O-Matic and Super Agent. As a result, it might cause problems if a site requires that you accept some cookies for it to function correctly. We haven’t encountered such a site yet, but it’s not impossible. If that happens on an iPhone or iPad, tap the AA button in the Safari address bar and then Turn On Content Blockers; on the Mac, choose View > Reload Without Content Blockers.

The Web is an ever-evolving place, so there’s no guarantee that these extensions will respond to or block every cookie consent popup. But you can report missed sites to the Content-O-Matic and Super Agent developers, and Joel Arvidsson releases regular updates to block more nags and fix partially broken websites. If you use only Safari for Web browsing, Hush could be all you need on all your Apple devices. Those who rely on other Web browsers on the Mac can pick either Consent-O-Matic or Super Agent to supplement Hush on the iPhone and iPad.

(featured image by istock.com/pla2na).

Posted on October 11, 2023 by MacTLC