“Hush” Blocks Cookie and Newsletter Pop-Ups in Safari
Tired of pop-ups constantly asking you to enable cookies, or pop-ups asking you to sign up for our newsletter ? A free, open-source extension for Safari called Hush means you’ll never see them, and also nags about things like turning on notifications. It’s the kind of thing you install and then forget about until you use someone else’s computer or phone and then wonder how anyone lives without it.
Hush is not an ad blocker, although it does use the same Safari features as ad blockers. Joel Arvidsson , who created and maintains the tool, states that it has “absolutely no access to your browser habits or passwords” and that it does not track behavior.
After installing Hush, you need to make sure that the extension is enabled in Safari. On a Mac, you can do this by opening Safari, opening Safari Preferences, and going to the Extensions tab. Make sure the Quiet checkbox is checked. On an iPhone or iPad, you’ll need to open the Settings app, scroll to open Safari , then navigate to the open extension . Make sure Hush mode is turned on.
After that, everything is ready – Hush will work in the background and block various interference. The entire application takes up half a megabyte, which means it won’t have a significant impact on your system’s performance.
What this does affect is your viewing experience. We’re all tired of being told to enable cookies and would be happy to just not see them. This doesn’t mean you block all cookies – this could break many websites. By law, a European Union regulation known as GDPR requires websites to ask for permission to use any “non-essential” cookies. However, not every website complies with this law, partly because it only applies in Europe and partly because some people do not obey the law. Hush simply doesn’t allow you to see the cookie pop-up, which means you can browse the web without much disruption. This also means you never consent to non-essential cookies, which is probably good for your privacy overall, even if it’s non-binding.