The Aloha IOS App Now Lets You Permanently Block Cookie Pop-Ups
If you surf the Internet, you’ve no doubt encountered a pop-up window asking for your permission to use cookies . You probably clicked “Yes” without thinking, but it’s one of those friction points that gets on your nerves when you’re just trying to do a little shopping or check the news.
This week, Aloha Browser introduced a feature to its mobile app that supposedly removes these annoying requests. Cookie consent management settings save your cookie preferences across your entire browser and are automatically applied to any site you visit. This feature is the newest addition to the list of privacy features in the Aloha browser, which includes built-in VPN, ad blocking, and privacy reporting.
I downloaded and tested this feature in Aloha on my iPhone 15 Pro for a few days. To enable the Manage Cookie Consent setting, I went to the settings menu within the app, went to the AdBlock section and selected GDPR Consent. I then selected Allow All.
I visited several shopping and sports websites in Aloha and Safari private browsing modes to compare them. I visited a few random websites such as LEGO, Barnes and Noble, MLB, NFL and Starbucks. When I visited these sites in Safari, I was greeted with a pop-up window with cookie information as soon as the page loaded. When I visited these pages in Aloha, the pop-ups never showed up, which definitely left me a little confused. I kept waiting for the cookie consent, but the pop-ups never appeared.
Aloha offers some of its advanced privacy features exclusively at its premium tier, but setting up cookie consent management is free. Overall, I think I still prefer Safari because it works equally well on desktop and mobile platforms and blocks most third-party cookies by default. Meanwhile, this new option in Aloha is only available in the iOS app and not anywhere else. The plan is to release an Android version in early 2025, but I’m not eager to switch to it just yet.