The new “Hide Distracting Items” feature in iOS18 Safari has been a godsend for me. Just tap on the offending overlay/prompt and watch it disappear into the digital ether.
Even with ad blockers, these sign in prompts are becoming increasingly common and annoying.
Blocking Google and Reddit sign in popups especially have restored some of my sanity.
My uneducated assumption based on their docs is that it drops DOM elements or something, rather than network requests. The UI seems to be that you select things you want to be rid of, and the browser makes it so. They state that frequently-changing parts of the page, including ads, don’t get filtered, presumably because whatever they filter on is statically defined structure.
It allowed me to block the initial cookie overlay, which then allowed me to read the 'article'. Scrolling down the page triggered a popup which I could then block. Works pretty well!
1990s Google would then have used "distracting item" stats to adjust website ranks downwards had they done the same thing in Chrome (and had Chrome existed). Ironically, this article describes Google as now being the source of such a distracting item.
Even with ad blockers, these sign in prompts are becoming increasingly common and annoying.
Blocking Google and Reddit sign in popups especially have restored some of my sanity.