Opera Touch brings website cookie blocking to iOS

Last fall, Opera introduced Opera Touch for iOS — a solid alternative to Safari on iPhone, optimized for one-handed use. Today, the company is rolling out a notable new feature to this app: cookie blocking. Yes, it can now block those annoying dialogs that ask you to accept the website’s cookies. These are particularly problematic on mobile, where they often entirely interrupt your ability to view the content, as opposed to on many desktop websites where you can (kind of) ignore the pop-up banner that appears at the bottom or the top of the page.

Cookie dialogs have become prevalent across the web as a result of Europe’s GDPR, but many people find them overly intrusive. Today, it takes an extra click to dismiss these prompts, which slows down web browsing — especially for those times you’re on the hunt for a particular piece of information and are visiting several websites in rapid succession.

The cookie blocking feature was first launched in November on Opera’s flagship app for Android, but hadn’t yet made its way to iOS — through any browser app, that is, not just one from Opera. The company says it uses a mix of CSS and JavaScript heuristics in order to block the prompts.

At the time of the launch, Opera noted it had tested the feature with some 15,000 sites.

It’s important to note that the default setting for the cookie blocker on Opera Touch will allow the websites to set cookies.

Here’s how it works. When you enable the feature, it will hide the dialog boxes from appearing, allowing you to read a website without having to first close the prompt. However, when you turn on the Cookie Blocker option, another setting is also switched on: one that says “automatically accept cookie dialogs.”

That means, in practice, when you’re enabling the Cookie Blocker, you’re also enabling cookie acceptance if you don’t take further action.

But Opera says you can disable this checkbox, if you don’t want your browser to give websites your acceptance.

In addition to the new cookie blocking, the browser has a number of other options that make it an interesting alternative to Safari on iOS or Google Chrome.

For example, if offers built-in ad blocking, cryptocurrency mining protection (which prevents malicious sites from using your device’s resources to mine for cryptocurrencies), a way to send web content to your PC through Opera’s “Flow” technology and — most importantly — a design focused on using the app with just one hand.

Since the app’s launch in April, the company has rolled out 23 new features in total. This includes a new dark theme, as well as the addition of a private mode, plus search engine choice, which offers 11 options, including Qwant and DuckDuckGo, and other features.

The app is a free download on iOS.