I just stumbled on this thread and, after reading through it, it seems clear a lot of folks don't understand the big change that happened a while back with Safari. In the past, all ad blockers were extensions that basically filtered out ads at the rendering stage, consuming considerable additional resources to do so. But with the Safari content blocking API, the modern MacOS (or iOS) ad blocker app does nothing more than provide a way to manage multiple blacklists and whitelists (rules) and updating of those developer supplied rules. When you launch the ad blocker app it briefly consumes quite a bit of resources updating the rules into Safari via the API. Once that is done the ad blocker app can be quit. Henceforth, when browsing a web site, safari applies the rules (very slight bump in resource demands to scan through a data structure to do that), and then unwanted content is filtered out by avoidance -- the content is never requested by the browser (very significant reduction in resource consumption). So the only ads you will see (assuming the necessary rules are present and enabled) are embedded first-party content that is served on equal footing as core content. Of course sites can use javascript to detect nonexistence of expected document objects for ads and then suppress the core content from the site accordingly (ad blocker blocker). To block YouTube ad content, I think you would need to intercept the video stream and preprocess it which would cause playback delay and consume a lot of resources (I don't think any ad blockers can do that with the latest YouTube embedded ad implementation). I use 1Blocker and browsing of web sites goes way, way faster. I hadn't realized the 1Blocker developers were abducted by aliens... but I was aware of the "second iOS app" ripoff scheme (with 1Blocker X or whatever it's called). I don't know anything about wipr but hopefully that one leverages the Safari Content Blocking API, too. The legacy ad blockers like Ad Blocker and Ad Blocker Plus are undesirable now, at least on Mac.
Oh, I forgot to mention that using an ad blocker that leverages the Safari Content Blocking API not only results in faster web page loads (faster than if you didn't have any ad blocker installed at all), but also battery life is significantly increased on Apple portable devices.
P. S. I just verified that both 1Blocker legacy and 1Blocker X on iOS sync just fine with 1Blocker app on Mac via iCloud. Yeah, I just gave the developers 70% of another $4.99 -- the last app update was 2 months ago which isn't too bad. I launched both 1Blocker for Mac and 1Blocker X on my iPhone and as I enabled the toggles on my iPhone the toggles got enabled on my Mac as I watched which was cool. One thing I did notice, though, was that 1Blocker X on iOS has a blocking category that doesn't exist in 1Blocker app for Mac ("Block Annoyances") so that couldn't visibly sync, but I suspect those rules are just in different places in the Mac app (probably due for any update). Also, the 1Blocker Mac app has an ad blocker blocker category, but I don't think those rules work well or at all, from what I can tell. I should also mention that after first installing 1Blocker X for iOS, most of the important toggles were initially off and that "off" state sync'ed to the Mac. So I turned them on for both platforms as my syncing experiment.
Only Safari ads/trackers.1Blocker X, $5, is it worth it? Does it only block ads on safari or will it block ads system wide such as YouTube.app as well?
What I don't understand is why can't Apple just build-in an ad blocker into Safari if they already have a native content blocker api?
Also, I know this is Firefox, but what are your thoughts on Firefox Focus for iOS Safari?
Wipr seems superior based on how the trackers are built and setup.I used to use Firefox Focus, but I've since switched to Adguard for both iOS and Mac (the new, free Mac App Store version). Both are great, but I find Adguard a little more effective.
Wipr seems superior based on how the trackers are built and setup.
Adguard (the free Mac App Store edition, not the paid systemwide version) and Wipr are both built the same way using the content blocking API.
But Adguard adds extra features like a whitelist and a utility to block specific elements on the page. That came in very handy for the stuff Wipr missed or broke sites on.
I personally regret buying Wipr, but it was only $2-3. It's fine for a very basic solution, but that's it.
What I don't understand is why can't Apple just build-in an ad blocker into Safari if they already have a native content blocker api?
Also, I know this is Firefox, but what are your thoughts on Firefox Focus for iOS Safari?
Agreed on the element blocking but as you can now enable/disable the content blocking per site then a whitelist is, AFAICS, unnecessary.
I thought the same thing until I needed to whitelist just a third party resource to avoid breaking a site's functionality, which can't be done in Wipr. It can only be turned on and off per site.
Wipr is fine app, but Adguard is free and offers more functionality. I switched when it came out, even though I had already paid for Wipr.
There is a bit of a tradeoff with these apps. If you notice the apps like Adguard that allow you to select elements for blocking give you a privacy notice along the lines of they can see everything you do in the browser. I'm not saying Adguard is doing anything nefarious with that data, but it makes some people uncomfortable. Apps like Wipr that do not show that warning do not have a similar privacy notice since the app cannot see your web activity at all.
So you may be giving up some privacy in exchange for the added feature(s).
Understood, but not all content blocker apps are open source like this, and it just makes some people uneasy.The app itself can see what you do in the browser, much like other apps with the same functionality, but the company making Adguard could only see that if the information were being sent to them. It's an open source app for anyone concerned about that https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari
I'm a fan of the new AdGuard extension. Was waiting for it as I was a big fan of AdGuard pre-Safari 12. Might try out Wipr at some point too, but for now I'm happy.
Out of curiosity, what are the other new ones that you've tried?Same here. Love the new AdGuard for Safari in the MAS. The only thing I don't like about it is its icon that has to be ever present in the menu bar.
I contacted their support and was told it's due to a limitation in macOS but I know for a fact with the other new adblock extensions in the MAS (I've tried 4 so far), none of them have icons that occupy the menu bar. So it's a little strange that AdGuard can't seem to operate without it. My menu bar is already overcrowded with icons so hopefully they'll fix this in the future.
Out of curiosity, what are the other new ones that you've tried?