Core How-Tos

Hide elements on a page

The picker is the whole product. Turn it on, point at what's bothering you, click, and it's gone — and it stays gone the next time you're on that page.

Start the picker

Two ways, whichever suits you:

  • Click the URLflows for Page Pruning icon in your toolbar and press Pick element to hide.
  • Press Alt+Shift+H without touching the mouse.

A banner appears across the top of the page — Click an element to hide it — Esc to finish — so you always know the picker is live.

Pick what to hide

  1. Move your mouse over the page. The element under the cursor is outlined so you can see exactly what you're about to remove.
  2. Click it. It disappears immediately.
  3. Keep clicking to hide more — the picker stays on, so a cluttered page can be cleaned up in one pass.
  4. Press Esc when you're done.

While the picker is running, your clicks go to the picker rather than the page, so you won't accidentally follow a link or trigger a button.

Aim at the right thing

The highlight shows the exact element under your cursor, which isn't always the one you mean. Hovering the text inside a cookie banner may highlight just the paragraph rather than the whole bar.

Move toward the edge of the thing you want — its border, padding, or background — and the highlight expands to the container. Watch the outline and click when it matches what you actually want gone.

No gap left behind

When hiding what you clicked would leave its parent visually empty, URLflows hides the parent instead — and keeps going up as long as that stays true. A promo box inside a wrapper with its own padding takes the wrapper with it, so the layout closes up instead of leaving a blank band.

This only happens when the parent has nothing else visible in it. Containers that hold other content you want to keep are left alone.

What happens next time

Each hidden element is saved against that page. On every later visit the rules are re-applied as the page loads, so what you hid is already gone by the time you see it — through reloads, new tabs, and browser restarts.

Related guides

Changed your mind? See Bring hidden elements back. To understand which pages a rule covers, read How pages are remembered. If something you hid keeps coming back, try Troubleshoot common issues.