Scrolling through a major news site lately can feel like flipping through a catalogue of bad news, one grim headline about political dysfunction, war or climate disaster after another, and plenty of people have started looking for ways to opt out of specific topics without giving up the internet altogether. Some social media platforms already let users mute posts containing certain words directly in their settings, while others need a separate browser extension to do the same job, but until now there hasn't been an easy way to apply that kind of filtering across ordinary news websites. A recently launched Safari extension called Filtre changes that, letting anyone build a personal list of blocked keywords that quietly hides or dims matching content anywhere on the web.
How the Filtering Works
Filtre is built to run on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and a single purchase covers all three devices under the same account. Setting it up takes only a few steps: open the app, grant it permission to read the websites visited, and start typing in the words or phrases that should be blocked. Because the extension is tied to iCloud, any keyword added on one device shows up almost immediately on the others, so a list built on a Mac is ready to use on an iPhone without extra effort.
Trial Period and Pricing
New users get a full week to try Filtre before paying anything. Once the trial ends, the extension can be kept for $1.50 a month, $9 for a full year, or unlocked permanently with a single $28 payment, giving people the choice between a small recurring cost and a one-time fee depending on how long they expect to keep using it.
Three Ways to Hide What You Don't Want to See
Filtre doesn't just have one blunt on-off switch for blocked content. Under the Default Settings tab in the app, which sits in the app drawer on iPhone and iPad or can be found through Finder on a Mac, users can choose exactly how flagged material is treated. The standard setting simply hides anything containing a blocked keyword. A second option called Fade leaves the headline visible but masks the offending word or phrase and lowers the opacity of the whole line, making it easy for the eye to slide past without fully registering it. A third setting, Grayscale, strips the colour out of any part of a page that contains a blocked term, turning it black-and-white so it stands out as something to skip rather than something to read.
Building Separate Filters for Separate Sites
Beyond a single universal blocklist, Filtre also supports site-specific filter sets through its Website Settings tab. Someone who regularly visits entertainment or gaming sites, for instance, could set up a filter just for those pages that hides spoilers for something like Christopher Nolan's Odyssey or Grand Theft Auto 6, while leaving keyword filters for political news untouched everywhere else. Filter sets can also be switched off entirely on chosen sites, and they can be exported and shared, including by AirDrop between devices, which is useful for anyone who wants to hand a ready-made blocklist to a friend or who prefers not to rely on iCloud syncing at all.
Where the Extension Falls Short
The tool isn't flawless everywhere. Opening Instagram inside Safari after deleting the app produced no filtering effect at all, though that gap matters less given that most social platforms already let users mute specific keywords on their own. Reddit fared better, with filtering working as expected, except that switching over to the Old Reddit interface caused Filtre to hide entire feeds rather than just the matching posts.
What Happens to Your Data
Handing a browser extension permission to read every site visited naturally raises privacy questions, since that level of access could, in theory, expose a great deal of personal browsing activity. Developer Jeffrey Kuiken has said the app collects no user data, and that keyword lists are stored only on-device and within the user's own linked iCloud account rather than on any external server. Kuiken previously built Noir, a separate Safari extension that adds dark mode to any website, and has built up goodwill in the developer community through a transparent pricing approach and consistent updates over time.
For anyone who has tried muting keywords app by app only to find the same words reappear the moment a browser tab opens, Filtre effectively extends that same idea to the entire web, handing readers more control over how much bad news reaches them in a single sitting.
