I’ve been using uBlock Origin Lite on iOS for several months now, but one shortcoming I see with the newer WebExtensions implementation in Safari is that WebExtensions can’t be used with the in-app Safari views, meaning extensions such as this one don’t work with in-app Safari views. There was an older Safari content blocker API that did work with the in-app Safari views, but it seems like apps are being updated to stop using it. As a workaround, I’ve been trying to set my apps to open the Safari app for links where possible, but I would have preferred to use the in-app Safari views.
As a side note, I personally HATE apps that opens links in an in-app web view (apps like Instagram, Facebook, etc). I really wish Apple could have a system wide preference where it could force in-app web views to open in the browser.
It has frustrated me for a LONG time that we have all collectively seemingly decide to break links.
It used to be that you could click a link in an app, it opens in your web browser where you're already logged in to the relevant service, so you get to see the content the link points to.
These days, you click a link in an app, it opens in an in-app web view where you're not logged in, so you just see a login screen.
Not even the "open in Safari" button works, since by the time you have the opportunity to click it, you've already been redirected to the login page. You literally have to long-press on the link, copy it, switch to your browser, and paste it in to the omni-bar. I don't understand how this god forsaken industry's UX "experts" have all agreed that this should be the universal user experience.
It's especially bad in apps like Slack, where 99% of the links I'm ever interested in are links to our internal gitlab, some internal knowledge base article, some internal tool, or some other thing that requires being logged in to view any of the content. Links just plain do not work almost ever in Slack without the manual long-press -> copy -> switch to Safari -> paste dance.
This behavior (as far as I can tell) has broken the Expensify iOS app for us at work. We have a conditional access policy that requires a “compliant” device to succeed the SSO login. However, only the iOS Edge browser can prove compliance and Expensify refuses to hand over that login process to the Edge browser preferring to use its own built-in browser. So login fail and as far as I can tell there is nothing we can do about it except for exempt that app from the conditional access policies.
Maybe what breaks that process is what Edge does not do and Safari does. There is more to a browser than the rendering engine. Furthermore, does Safari still uses an optimized JS engine that the other browsers cannot use?
I hate in-app browsers, too, but there is a Slack setting that will let you open in Chrome or Safari (choosing Safari opens whatever your default iOS browser is).
You can change the Browser Application setting under Preferences after tapping on your Avatar in the Slack app.
> you click a link in an app, it opens in an in-app web view where you're not logged in
But you could be. You could log in from the in-app web view, and it would be remembered and compartmentalised in that app, so that next time you click a link you’re logged in.
Nowadays most providers (and IT teams managing SSO) log out stale sessions quickly, so by the time he clicked another link to it in Slack he'd probably be logged out, again.
I also love that app sizes get super bloated (several gigs per app) due to cached safari data from the in-app web view. Seems the only way to clear it is to go into settings and wipe the website data for safari entirely. I don't believe app developers can clear this themselves either, despite it appearing as their app taking up so much space when really it's just due to safari cache that seemingly doesn't clear on its own.
I find gmail to be the absolute worst offender in this category.
1. They dark pattern you into downloading their browser (they give three options, two of which are chrome)
2. In not launching iOS, I’m not logged into the session I may already have open in safari. Which is incredibly painful for any product that sends notifications via email, which id like to action.
And if I do login, and it asks for an email verification code… fail. I can’t access it in gmail without closing the browser…
3. Their in app browser (or the way they re-write links?) doesn’t seem to play nice with opening the corresponding app. Never seems to work.
Incredibly user hostile.
Is there a better alternative mail client I can use with gsuite?
I get more frustrated from when they go the other direction. Google Maps, for instance. When I go to the website, it asks if I'd like to use the app instead, with the usual dark pattern of having the "no" button greyed out. But after I tell it no, as soon as I touch the search bar, it automatically opens the app anyway. I wish there was a setting in Safari that disabled websites from opening apps.
- showing focus-stealing modals when loading the page/app, which breaks the quick look functionality on iOS
- interrupting your workflow with tutorial popups (especially multi-step ones that point to different parts the screen) that demo or upsell a new feature, requiring you to dismiss them to continue
- not having an option saying "I'm a power user, stop explaining shit I already know"
To be honest, if the concept of growth hacking was erased from the universe, pretty much none of this crap would exist. Atlassian, Browserstack: I'm looking at you.
> I wish there was a setting in Safari that disabled websites from opening apps.
This has been one of my biggest iOS peeves for a long time—I really wish that installing an app wasn’t a commitment to letting it handle all of the links it wants to.
It’s particularly annoying because a lot of apps are terrible at actually handling the link: the app will show a login screen or some kind of interstitial and then just forget where you were going. That stupid behavior isn’t limited to web links either, it’s really great when it’s the app’s own push notification (thus irretrievable once tapped), but which the app will not even open properly 100% of the time.
There are a couple of imperfect workarounds (long pressing, incognito), but mostly I’d just rather have an option to limit or disable this behavior entirely—in the absence of that I’ve actually just uninstalled all of the worst offenders, I’m sick of having a million damn apps.
My favourite part is when it opens a form or something to fill out but if you navigate away from this in-app web view to another app and back (say to get a password) you lose the session. It’s incredibly frustrating
I’d think it was about tracking if I didn’t know that the ios api most apps use gives no access to what the user is doing. I feel like it must be some folk wisdom among app developers about “keeping people in the app”. It’s especially bad since the implementation always seems to struggle hard with self-links, eg if you open a web link in X then follow a link in the story to a tweet you get a broken result in most apps.
This small technical annoyance is one of the biggest issues… of modern society. They do that deliberately to keep users within their apps to drive up engagement. Which in turn drives down exposure to different opinions by keeping the user within the app driven by the same algorithm uninterrupted. If they to change default opening of web links as you would expect it, their revenue numbers would drop dramatically.
The lawmakers should be competent enough to recognise this problem and have laws against keeping people within the apps for no reason. (The only reason may be to use the web sign-in).
Imagine on desktop computer os, you click a link within WhatsApp app and it opens a window within that app and load the webpage there, without your login cookies, and makes you login if you need using mouse with on-screen keyboard only…
Yes I don’t have Chrome just Safari and it used to still insist on doing this. So it had none of my passwords saved etc. and was some brain dead Gmail browser.
I just tried again and it opened Safari, so maybe at some point they enabled a way to tell it to not do that? I see in the Gmail settings I have a setting checked for use default browser app.
So if you fixed this Gmail or iOS people thank you!
But then I have to upgrade to iOS 26… The cure is worse than the disease!
For now I am using wireguard+pihole on a cheap VPS for all my devices. It’s not perfect (data center IP so some places block it) but it’s good enough for now. When I’m forced to update to 26 will definitely look at Wipr since I tested that out and it was really good other than the in-app issue.
I agree, and I feel it’s worth mentioning that in-app web views bypass private browsing, so they store cookies even if you run Safari in private browsing 100% of the time. PITA to clear them, buried in settings.
Without having any experience with the APIs to back up my claim, I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules. AdGuard seems to include both options simultaneously, where you have "advanced protection" (WebExtensions API) that only works in Safari and separate blocking lists (old API) that work in both Safari and WebView. This is precisely what keeps me from using uBlock Origin Lite.
> I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules.
This is not really accurate.
The Safari content blocking API and the WebExtensions DeclarativeNetRequest API are comparable. The difference is that WebExtensions are JavaScript and can run in the context of the web page. With WebExtensions, you get DNR plus arbitrary JS, whereas the Safari content blocker API is native code and doesn't run in the context of the web page. The arbitrary runtime JS is what allows you to do things that you can't do with declarative content blocking rules.
You could also have a Safari content blocker with an optional WebExtension for additional functionality with no usage of DeclarativeNetRequest.
> There was an older Safari content blocker API that did work with the in-app Safari views, but it seems like apps are being updated to stop using it.
Which apps are being updated to stop using it?
The difference is simply that the Safari content blocker API is Apple-specific, so it can be used only on iOS and macOS, whereas uBlock Origin Lite uses the cross-platform DeclarativeNetRequest API, because uBlock Origin Lite is itself cross-platform.
Adblock Plus did so on iOS in version 3.0.0. I haven’t used ABP on other platforms in years but for awhile it was only of the few decent free options I knew of on Safari.
Ah yes, I see in the release notes, "Rebuilt with WebExtension technology for improved ad blocking performance".
I'm not sure why they did that or whether it's actually improved, but the Apple-specific content blocker API is certainly not deprecated or anything like that.
The biggest difference is that the Safari content blocker API is native, in other words, Swift or Objective-C, whereas DeclarativeNetRequest (invented by Google) is a JavaScript API.
In-app views can't really have DNR unless they also have full browser extensions too.
Brave has also been great here. It even blocks google/reddit login/gps/<insert annoyance> popups.
With brave you can uninstall the native Reddit app and just use the webapp instead, without ads and stupid-ass "It's better in the app!" or "instead of taking a screenshot, use the share button!" messages.
I've been using Orion for the same reason. It supports chrome/firefox extensions too so you can install uBlock origin, though it's built-in ad-block is quite good but its still cool being able to install other extensions.
That was my setup until recently. The ads are YT blocked well on iOS but it kept having hiccups on iPadOS. I switched to uBlock in safari and it works well. I wish it showed what is being blocked on each page instead of the little counter in the icon.
I had been wishing for uBlock Origin for Safari for years, but now that it’s here (I’ve been using it since the betas), I’m disappointed. It’s really ugly to look at (even the icon in the toolbar looks out of place), configuration is awkward and resets itself unless you give it full permissions for every website from the get go, and it doesn’t seem to be more effective than other popular blockers. Additionally, pretty much every other blocker includes several extensions to overcome the well-known 150K rule limit, but uBlock Origin only includes one, meaning it can’t be blocking as much.
Yes. I used to use Wipr 1 and also found it underwhelming, eventually settling on 1Blocker. Eventually I decided to give Wipr 2 a shot and it’s much improved.
It also now allows blocking even outside of Safari. Though that requires iOS/macOS 26, which I have no intention of installing any time soon, so can’t speak for how effective that is.
I've been using Wipr for a long time. Both on iOS and macOS and it works perfectly. I don't see any ads. When I happen to use or see other people's devices I'm amazed by the amount of ads on the screen.
Yeah, the ad situation really is so horrible it is worth paying to get out of it. Also supporting an inde dev to provide a useful app with the equivalent of a nice cup of coffee doesn't feel all that bad.
I mean I pay on several websites to not see ads, so it (paying to remove ads) seems like the normalest thing. And it should be the normalest thing.
The only weird thing here is that we pay a party that is not the one serving the ads, so the primary misses income from ads and potentially paying customers.
But I suspect that is what you meant with your remark.
Moreover, paying on every website is just insane overkill and very expense compared to the value you get from occasional visits (the sites I subscribe to I visit multiple times a day and they provide business value).
Something like Alby [0] could solve this though. But Crypto currency has become a dirty word around here ;) (Alby does allow fractions of cents to be transferred, like a stream, on website visits, it (among others) also powers per-second paying for Podcasts streams, splitting revenue between multiple podcast hosts, the podcast app and the central index if set up that way. It's hard to set up though, something fiat-currency, based with 0 overhead would be nice...).
No. Not having ads is the "normalest" thing. I would never pay. I would use an ad blocker, and if that does not work, I would not use the website at all. This is the "normalest" thing to do, not giving them money for using ads.
You are enabling them and paying them for using ads. How is that the "normalest" or even normal thing to do? How do you expect them to stop showing ads if not only the ads themselves work, but even the ones who don't click ads pay them for having ads (to not show them, but ultimately it is for them having ads)?
I think you misunderstood. I'm saying The normalest thing is to offer value for value. Value for the gathered information, as money, or you let them influence you via ads.
It is not normal to expect something for free. You do not have the right to someone else's productivity on your terms, you have it on theirs.
I got this far down in the comments before I realized that this subject was such a big deal to everyone because, for them, their phones are what they use to interact with websites. It's bizarre. Last year I needed to watch a video to do a simple furnace repair, and I could not watch it on my phone... I'd have to keep going back to my desk to watch it there, and then return to do the fix.
Even the laptop's difficult to do much on unless I have it plugged into the dock and the two monitors.
I'm not sure when everyone and myself diverged, but it feels pretty strange.
Imagine there's a business that can't really enforce whether you walk out without providing compensation. You realize you have the home court advantage on enforcement and guess what, you don't want to pay. It's your browser/wallet and that's your prerogative. But what does that mean about how tempting their goods are? Do we have prerogative to these goods?
Should we live in a world where we only permit business models that require customers pay directly or don't enter at all?
Personally I’ve been using Brave browser on desktop and iOS. It has some of the best adblocking on mobile. Also use adguard pro which provides dns level filtering.
In all these years I haven’t found a better solution than DNS blocking with NextDNS on iOS. The only place I get ads is YT (but for that I have an Albanian VPN)
If you're in Europe, there's the newly launched DNS4EU project which is free for personal use, and also includes adblocking at the DNS level like NextDNS.
I use it in conjunction with Adguard and secure DNS, but they also publish configuration profiles for iOS.
Interesting article, i will have to dig around some more.
I want to say though, that the initiative is sponsored by the EU and has privacy preservation as one of it's main objectives, so until proven, i will assume that this is all circumstantial.
For me at least, it solves exactly the use case i was previously using NextDNS for, which was basically DNS level ad blocking, and while i still have a NextDNS subscription, my previous months of testing have proven DNS4EU to be more stable and slightly faster responding than NextDNS (for my usage).
I read that if/when Google find out that you’re not actually Albanian they’ll immediately band your entire account. So I wouldn’t recommend doing this trick for your main Google account that has your email and Google drive stuff….etc. you likely want to create a burner account just for this.
Also do you connect to the Albanian VPN all the time? That would mean all the websites you connect to now think your in Albania
Google DGAF. And I don’t use their other services. Especially not email.
I use their WireGuard endpoint with the WireGuard app in iOS. I have the WireGuard app icon next to YT and toggle it as I start using and stop using YT. I’ve set mullvad dns to also block ads etc so if I forget to turn the VPN off it’s not a big deal.
I tried selective routing but it’s impossible to figure out the YT IPs. They overlap with GCP infra and a lot of apps block connections from Albania so they break and the VPN has to be toggled.
If someone knows of a list that only includes YT servers I’d love that because wireguard lets you do routing easily if you have CIDR blocks.
Safari does not respect the operating system’s DNS settings, it uses its own. I have seen several reports online that you can disable this behaviour by turning off iCloud Private Relay or disabling Advanced Tracking and Fingerprint Protection, but was never able to do so with various combinations.
iCloud Private Relay is the only thing that stops Safari using your NextDNS config, turn that off and you're golden. I've been using NextDNS since it launched, I love it.
> iCloud Private Relay is the only thing that stops Safari using your NextDNS config
Maybe that’s true for the NextDNS configuration—I don’t know, I haven’t tested, so I’ll take your word for it—but not true for DNS settings in general.
> turn that off and you're golden.
Unless you want iCloud Private Relay, in which case you’re not.
uBo paired with 1Blocker and Hush has my safari running at 100% blocked on all the adblock test sites. I was only at 84% with Adguard. Its a small improvement, but I'll take it.
Those "adblock test" sites misinform people, they should never be used as they lead people to make bad decisions regarding their choice of content blockers.[1]
It is a cheap phone I think I got it new at $160 and that's the thing it has 8GB of RAM, the pictures are subpar (blurring) but other than that it works for me, multi-app non-game
This is on Verizon but yeah it'll just install new games and say "Enjoy these new apps" I'm like wtf I think most recently one of the games it installed is Mahjong
One annoying thing I have is, when I want to disable Adblock on some website (suspecting Adblock impair functionality, or where Adblock is not needed), I need to grant the extension full access before I can disable it.
I’ve been using uBlock Origin Lite on iOS for several months now, but one shortcoming I see with the newer WebExtensions implementation in Safari is that WebExtensions can’t be used with the in-app Safari views, meaning extensions such as this one don’t work with in-app Safari views. There was an older Safari content blocker API that did work with the in-app Safari views, but it seems like apps are being updated to stop using it. As a workaround, I’ve been trying to set my apps to open the Safari app for links where possible, but I would have preferred to use the in-app Safari views.
As a side note, I personally HATE apps that opens links in an in-app web view (apps like Instagram, Facebook, etc). I really wish Apple could have a system wide preference where it could force in-app web views to open in the browser.
It has frustrated me for a LONG time that we have all collectively seemingly decide to break links.
It used to be that you could click a link in an app, it opens in your web browser where you're already logged in to the relevant service, so you get to see the content the link points to.
These days, you click a link in an app, it opens in an in-app web view where you're not logged in, so you just see a login screen.
Not even the "open in Safari" button works, since by the time you have the opportunity to click it, you've already been redirected to the login page. You literally have to long-press on the link, copy it, switch to your browser, and paste it in to the omni-bar. I don't understand how this god forsaken industry's UX "experts" have all agreed that this should be the universal user experience.
It's especially bad in apps like Slack, where 99% of the links I'm ever interested in are links to our internal gitlab, some internal knowledge base article, some internal tool, or some other thing that requires being logged in to view any of the content. Links just plain do not work almost ever in Slack without the manual long-press -> copy -> switch to Safari -> paste dance.
This behavior (as far as I can tell) has broken the Expensify iOS app for us at work. We have a conditional access policy that requires a “compliant” device to succeed the SSO login. However, only the iOS Edge browser can prove compliance and Expensify refuses to hand over that login process to the Edge browser preferring to use its own built-in browser. So login fail and as far as I can tell there is nothing we can do about it except for exempt that app from the conditional access policies.
I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do, considering both are just UIs over WebKit...
Not that it matters, it's still an excellent example of stuff not working because links don't work as links anymore.
Maybe what breaks that process is what Edge does not do and Safari does. There is more to a browser than the rendering engine. Furthermore, does Safari still uses an optimized JS engine that the other browsers cannot use?
> I wonder what iOS Edge does which iOS Safari doesn't do, considering both are just UIs over WebKit...
"just" is not an appropriate word here. There's a ton of functionality in the native UI and non-WebKit code.
I hate in-app browsers, too, but there is a Slack setting that will let you open in Chrome or Safari (choosing Safari opens whatever your default iOS browser is).
You can change the Browser Application setting under Preferences after tapping on your Avatar in the Slack app.
> you click a link in an app, it opens in an in-app web view where you're not logged in
But you could be. You could log in from the in-app web view, and it would be remembered and compartmentalised in that app, so that next time you click a link you’re logged in.
Nowadays most providers (and IT teams managing SSO) log out stale sessions quickly, so by the time he clicked another link to it in Slack he'd probably be logged out, again.
It really is a bad user experience all around.
I could be, but I'm not. And I don't want to compartmentalize logins to Slack.
I also love that app sizes get super bloated (several gigs per app) due to cached safari data from the in-app web view. Seems the only way to clear it is to go into settings and wipe the website data for safari entirely. I don't believe app developers can clear this themselves either, despite it appearing as their app taking up so much space when really it's just due to safari cache that seemingly doesn't clear on its own.
I couldn’t agree more.
I find gmail to be the absolute worst offender in this category.
1. They dark pattern you into downloading their browser (they give three options, two of which are chrome)
2. In not launching iOS, I’m not logged into the session I may already have open in safari. Which is incredibly painful for any product that sends notifications via email, which id like to action.
And if I do login, and it asks for an email verification code… fail. I can’t access it in gmail without closing the browser…
3. Their in app browser (or the way they re-write links?) doesn’t seem to play nice with opening the corresponding app. Never seems to work.
Incredibly user hostile.
Is there a better alternative mail client I can use with gsuite?
I use the Gmail app and just have it set to always use the default browser?
Gmail app -> hamburger menu (top left), scroll down to settings, Default apps, Browser = "Default browser app (Configure in iOS settings)".
I think I must be misreading your concern - if so, not intentional.
What does "better" mean to you? The native Apple Mail app works with Gsuite.
I get more frustrated from when they go the other direction. Google Maps, for instance. When I go to the website, it asks if I'd like to use the app instead, with the usual dark pattern of having the "no" button greyed out. But after I tell it no, as soon as I touch the search bar, it automatically opens the app anyway. I wish there was a setting in Safari that disabled websites from opening apps.
Add to that list:
- showing focus-stealing modals when loading the page/app, which breaks the quick look functionality on iOS
- interrupting your workflow with tutorial popups (especially multi-step ones that point to different parts the screen) that demo or upsell a new feature, requiring you to dismiss them to continue
- not having an option saying "I'm a power user, stop explaining shit I already know"
To be honest, if the concept of growth hacking was erased from the universe, pretty much none of this crap would exist. Atlassian, Browserstack: I'm looking at you.
> I wish there was a setting in Safari that disabled websites from opening apps.
This has been one of my biggest iOS peeves for a long time—I really wish that installing an app wasn’t a commitment to letting it handle all of the links it wants to.
It’s particularly annoying because a lot of apps are terrible at actually handling the link: the app will show a login screen or some kind of interstitial and then just forget where you were going. That stupid behavior isn’t limited to web links either, it’s really great when it’s the app’s own push notification (thus irretrievable once tapped), but which the app will not even open properly 100% of the time.
There are a couple of imperfect workarounds (long pressing, incognito), but mostly I’d just rather have an option to limit or disable this behavior entirely—in the absence of that I’ve actually just uninstalled all of the worst offenders, I’m sick of having a million damn apps.
My favourite part is when it opens a form or something to fill out but if you navigate away from this in-app web view to another app and back (say to get a password) you lose the session. It’s incredibly frustrating
That's generally annoying though — web sites that can't preserve your session if you should click a link and then try to go back.
I’d think it was about tracking if I didn’t know that the ios api most apps use gives no access to what the user is doing. I feel like it must be some folk wisdom among app developers about “keeping people in the app”. It’s especially bad since the implementation always seems to struggle hard with self-links, eg if you open a web link in X then follow a link in the story to a tweet you get a broken result in most apps.
I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t break OAuth flows on _some_ webviews on _some_ operating systems. Miserable rabbit holes mitigating all the edge cases.
This small technical annoyance is one of the biggest issues… of modern society. They do that deliberately to keep users within their apps to drive up engagement. Which in turn drives down exposure to different opinions by keeping the user within the app driven by the same algorithm uninterrupted. If they to change default opening of web links as you would expect it, their revenue numbers would drop dramatically.
The lawmakers should be competent enough to recognise this problem and have laws against keeping people within the apps for no reason. (The only reason may be to use the web sign-in).
Imagine on desktop computer os, you click a link within WhatsApp app and it opens a window within that app and load the webpage there, without your login cookies, and makes you login if you need using mouse with on-screen keyboard only…
Gmail insists on doing this and always screws it up.
On iOS I have the chrome and gmail app installed and it always opens my links in chrome. Does it use the built-in browser if you don't have chrome?
Yes I don’t have Chrome just Safari and it used to still insist on doing this. So it had none of my passwords saved etc. and was some brain dead Gmail browser.
I just tried again and it opened Safari, so maybe at some point they enabled a way to tell it to not do that? I see in the Gmail settings I have a setting checked for use default browser app.
So if you fixed this Gmail or iOS people thank you!
Gmail is the worst for this
Apparently iOS 26 adds new APIs that allow filtering everywhere, including in all apps. Wipr added this functionality.
But then I have to upgrade to iOS 26… The cure is worse than the disease!
For now I am using wireguard+pihole on a cheap VPS for all my devices. It’s not perfect (data center IP so some places block it) but it’s good enough for now. When I’m forced to update to 26 will definitely look at Wipr since I tested that out and it was really good other than the in-app issue.
Or just do the 26 upgrade, the Liquid Glass changes are grossly overstated, it's not a drastic change...
I agree, and I feel it’s worth mentioning that in-app web views bypass private browsing, so they store cookies even if you run Safari in private browsing 100% of the time. PITA to clear them, buried in settings.
Without having any experience with the APIs to back up my claim, I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules. AdGuard seems to include both options simultaneously, where you have "advanced protection" (WebExtensions API) that only works in Safari and separate blocking lists (old API) that work in both Safari and WebView. This is precisely what keeps me from using uBlock Origin Lite.
> I believe that the WebExtensions API is more powerful in the sense that it allows more complex blocking rules.
This is not really accurate.
The Safari content blocking API and the WebExtensions DeclarativeNetRequest API are comparable. The difference is that WebExtensions are JavaScript and can run in the context of the web page. With WebExtensions, you get DNR plus arbitrary JS, whereas the Safari content blocker API is native code and doesn't run in the context of the web page. The arbitrary runtime JS is what allows you to do things that you can't do with declarative content blocking rules.
You could also have a Safari content blocker with an optional WebExtension for additional functionality with no usage of DeclarativeNetRequest.
> There was an older Safari content blocker API that did work with the in-app Safari views, but it seems like apps are being updated to stop using it.
Which apps are being updated to stop using it?
The difference is simply that the Safari content blocker API is Apple-specific, so it can be used only on iOS and macOS, whereas uBlock Origin Lite uses the cross-platform DeclarativeNetRequest API, because uBlock Origin Lite is itself cross-platform.
Adblock Plus did so on iOS in version 3.0.0. I haven’t used ABP on other platforms in years but for awhile it was only of the few decent free options I knew of on Safari.
Ah yes, I see in the release notes, "Rebuilt with WebExtension technology for improved ad blocking performance".
I'm not sure why they did that or whether it's actually improved, but the Apple-specific content blocker API is certainly not deprecated or anything like that.
The biggest difference is that the Safari content blocker API is native, in other words, Swift or Objective-C, whereas DeclarativeNetRequest (invented by Google) is a JavaScript API.
In-app views can't really have DNR unless they also have full browser extensions too.
The lack of proper adblocker on iOS is what convinced me to use the Brave browser instead of Firefox or Safari. An adblocker is included by default.
And as a bonus : possibility to keep music videos playing while changing app. (A parameter has to be switched for that though)
[delayed]
Brave has also been great here. It even blocks google/reddit login/gps/<insert annoyance> popups.
With brave you can uninstall the native Reddit app and just use the webapp instead, without ads and stupid-ass "It's better in the app!" or "instead of taking a screenshot, use the share button!" messages.
I've been using Orion for the same reason. It supports chrome/firefox extensions too so you can install uBlock origin, though it's built-in ad-block is quite good but its still cool being able to install other extensions.
+1 for Orion.
I’ve been using Ad Block Pro with safari on iOS for awhile and works perfectly. Even blocks YouTube ads (I watch YT via Safari)
That was my setup until recently. The ads are YT blocked well on iOS but it kept having hiccups on iPadOS. I switched to uBlock in safari and it works well. I wish it showed what is being blocked on each page instead of the little counter in the icon.
Does it work on YouTube ads?
Yes
Previous discussions of some months ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44335664
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43976898
I had been wishing for uBlock Origin for Safari for years, but now that it’s here (I’ve been using it since the betas), I’m disappointed. It’s really ugly to look at (even the icon in the toolbar looks out of place), configuration is awkward and resets itself unless you give it full permissions for every website from the get go, and it doesn’t seem to be more effective than other popular blockers. Additionally, pretty much every other blocker includes several extensions to overcome the well-known 150K rule limit, but uBlock Origin only includes one, meaning it can’t be blocking as much.
And it doesn't work anymore when you swipe back. The phone shows the previous page but without any adblocking.
I too hoped for a ublock origin with filters lists, kind of what we have on Firefox or even the lite version for chrome but it's not nearly as good.
And we can't say it's apple fault because other adblockers like Adguard does allow customs lists and custom rules.
We already have Wipr 2 (https://kaylees.site/wipr2.html) on the App store which is a pretty dang great ad blocker and well worth the price.
Is it better than Wipr 1? Because I paid for that one and it's kinda ... unsatisfactory.
Edit: at least compared to full uBlock Origin on desktop Firefox. No idea how good or bad are the other mobile solutions.
Most of the time i solve my mobile ad blocking needs by ... not browsing on mobile.
Yes. I used to use Wipr 1 and also found it underwhelming, eventually settling on 1Blocker. Eventually I decided to give Wipr 2 a shot and it’s much improved.
It also now allows blocking even outside of Safari. Though that requires iOS/macOS 26, which I have no intention of installing any time soon, so can’t speak for how effective that is.
https://kaylees.site/wipr-filtr.html
I've been using Wipr for a long time. Both on iOS and macOS and it works perfectly. I don't see any ads. When I happen to use or see other people's devices I'm amazed by the amount of ads on the screen.
Adguard works well and is free. I did pay for Wipr 1 but now switched to Adguard.
Yeah AdGuard seems to work great for me. Any reason to switch to unlock Origin Lite?
Doesn’t look like it supports Family Sharing, is that right?
I'm not sure I know what that is. It's a single purchase for a lifetime multi device license.
Imagine paying for not having to view ads.
Yeah, the ad situation really is so horrible it is worth paying to get out of it. Also supporting an inde dev to provide a useful app with the equivalent of a nice cup of coffee doesn't feel all that bad.
I think this is sarcastic?
I mean I pay on several websites to not see ads, so it (paying to remove ads) seems like the normalest thing. And it should be the normalest thing.
The only weird thing here is that we pay a party that is not the one serving the ads, so the primary misses income from ads and potentially paying customers.
But I suspect that is what you meant with your remark.
Moreover, paying on every website is just insane overkill and very expense compared to the value you get from occasional visits (the sites I subscribe to I visit multiple times a day and they provide business value).
Something like Alby [0] could solve this though. But Crypto currency has become a dirty word around here ;) (Alby does allow fractions of cents to be transferred, like a stream, on website visits, it (among others) also powers per-second paying for Podcasts streams, splitting revenue between multiple podcast hosts, the podcast app and the central index if set up that way. It's hard to set up though, something fiat-currency, based with 0 overhead would be nice...).
[0] https://getalby.com/
No. Not having ads is the "normalest" thing. I would never pay. I would use an ad blocker, and if that does not work, I would not use the website at all. This is the "normalest" thing to do, not giving them money for using ads.
You are enabling them and paying them for using ads. How is that the "normalest" or even normal thing to do? How do you expect them to stop showing ads if not only the ads themselves work, but even the ones who don't click ads pay them for having ads (to not show them, but ultimately it is for them having ads)?
I think you misunderstood. I'm saying The normalest thing is to offer value for value. Value for the gathered information, as money, or you let them influence you via ads.
It is not normal to expect something for free. You do not have the right to someone else's productivity on your terms, you have it on theirs.
It's been normal for thousands of years to pay for services which you use.
I got this far down in the comments before I realized that this subject was such a big deal to everyone because, for them, their phones are what they use to interact with websites. It's bizarre. Last year I needed to watch a video to do a simple furnace repair, and I could not watch it on my phone... I'd have to keep going back to my desk to watch it there, and then return to do the fix.
Even the laptop's difficult to do much on unless I have it plugged into the dock and the two monitors.
I'm not sure when everyone and myself diverged, but it feels pretty strange.
I do not watch videos on my phone either. I have never visited YouTube on my phone, for example. In fact, I rarely use my phone.
Better than viewing ads.
I mean… putting the app onto the store costs a yearly fee + development costs. I don’t think the dev should pay that out of their own pocket.
Imagine you're entitled to free work by others
Imagine asking the browser on my hardware to do things I don’t want it to do, and acting shocked when I tell it not to.
Imagine there's a business that can't really enforce whether you walk out without providing compensation. You realize you have the home court advantage on enforcement and guess what, you don't want to pay. It's your browser/wallet and that's your prerogative. But what does that mean about how tempting their goods are? Do we have prerogative to these goods?
Should we live in a world where we only permit business models that require customers pay directly or don't enter at all?
You know, I do not actually know that a website had ads before clicking on a link to it; I would be happy to only visit websites without ads.
It’s scummy to shove ads in my face without at least warning me and giving me a chance to leave, I think.
Fair point. There should be a header to reveal whether the payload has ads. Then you can refuse right there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45177601
Personally I’ve been using Brave browser on desktop and iOS. It has some of the best adblocking on mobile. Also use adguard pro which provides dns level filtering.
Vivaldi is mine as it blocks YouTube ads and lets me play yt videos with the screen locked.
In all these years I haven’t found a better solution than DNS blocking with NextDNS on iOS. The only place I get ads is YT (but for that I have an Albanian VPN)
If you're in Europe, there's the newly launched DNS4EU project which is free for personal use, and also includes adblocking at the DNS level like NextDNS.
I use it in conjunction with Adguard and secure DNS, but they also publish configuration profiles for iOS.
https://www.joindns4.eu/
https://www.joindns4.eu/dns-guidelines
Did some research on this DNS since it seemed promising. Apparently they rely on non-EU services? https://cybernews.com/security/european-independent-dns-reli...
Interesting article, i will have to dig around some more.
I want to say though, that the initiative is sponsored by the EU and has privacy preservation as one of it's main objectives, so until proven, i will assume that this is all circumstantial.
For me at least, it solves exactly the use case i was previously using NextDNS for, which was basically DNS level ad blocking, and while i still have a NextDNS subscription, my previous months of testing have proven DNS4EU to be more stable and slightly faster responding than NextDNS (for my usage).
EU? Sponsoring privacy preservation? I’m skeptical, to say the least.
Humm they only mention wifi. Can't do it on [3-4-5]G?
of course it can, it's all TCP/IP anyway, and the DNS has no clue about your transport layer.
I did look at iOS and couldn't find DNS settings for the [3-5]G connection, that's why I'm asking...
Thanks for pointing this out
I read that if/when Google find out that you’re not actually Albanian they’ll immediately band your entire account. So I wouldn’t recommend doing this trick for your main Google account that has your email and Google drive stuff….etc. you likely want to create a burner account just for this.
Also do you connect to the Albanian VPN all the time? That would mean all the websites you connect to now think your in Albania
Google DGAF. And I don’t use their other services. Especially not email.
I use their WireGuard endpoint with the WireGuard app in iOS. I have the WireGuard app icon next to YT and toggle it as I start using and stop using YT. I’ve set mullvad dns to also block ads etc so if I forget to turn the VPN off it’s not a big deal.
I tried selective routing but it’s impossible to figure out the YT IPs. They overlap with GCP infra and a lot of apps block connections from Albania so they break and the VPN has to be toggled.
If someone knows of a list that only includes YT servers I’d love that because wireguard lets you do routing easily if you have CIDR blocks.
I block YouTube ads on iOS by watching in the browser (with no YouTube app installed) and using AdGuard.
YT in the browser on iOS is torture.
It's fine if you use Vinegar [0]. No ads and you can even lock your phone and keep listening to the videos.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303...
Thanks will check it out
Why not just pay for a subscription instead of VPN?
Because I don’t want to give google any money. And mullvad has many other uses besides blocking YT ads.
How does the Albanian VPN help? No ad revenue in Albania?
For some reason there are no YT ads in Albania. It’s refreshing.
The CPM difference in US vs. rest of the world is huge. If Albania has cpm near zero, it's not worth to show ads there.
Why not pay for YouTube premium instead of paying for an Albanian VPN? Then your money goes to the video makers you watch.
I abhor google and don’t want to give them money.
Safari ads are not blocked when using NextDNS. Is it just me?
Safari does not respect the operating system’s DNS settings, it uses its own. I have seen several reports online that you can disable this behaviour by turning off iCloud Private Relay or disabling Advanced Tracking and Fingerprint Protection, but was never able to do so with various combinations.
iCloud Private Relay is the only thing that stops Safari using your NextDNS config, turn that off and you're golden. I've been using NextDNS since it launched, I love it.
> iCloud Private Relay is the only thing that stops Safari using your NextDNS config
Maybe that’s true for the NextDNS configuration—I don’t know, I haven’t tested, so I’ll take your word for it—but not true for DNS settings in general.
> turn that off and you're golden.
Unless you want iCloud Private Relay, in which case you’re not.
It’s is.
It’s not, and a basic “Safari DNS” web search shows you it’s not.
The normal uBlock origin extension can be installed on Orion browser for iOS
Orion is webkit and can be set as default browser.
Unfortunately uBlock Origin on Orion is a bit flaky. Also, the phone heats up a bit, but that might be due to Orion itself.
Yeah, I have the same problem. Had to stop using Orion because it always heated up the phone too much. A shame. Hopefully they fix it.
Is this legitimate? I can’t find any reference to this on Raymond Hill’s github or ublock’s web site.
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home mentions it.
uBo paired with 1Blocker and Hush has my safari running at 100% blocked on all the adblock test sites. I was only at 84% with Adguard. Its a small improvement, but I'll take it.
Those "adblock test" sites misinform people, they should never be used as they lead people to make bad decisions regarding their choice of content blockers.[1]
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1985170#c3
I use NextDNS on my iphone. It works well but be warned it can break some apps so you'll need to do some allow-listing
My biggest issue has been with captive portals for open WiFi networks. Allowlisting has helped some I think but not perfect
I use lite on firefox android it's great
It's funny my Motorolla phone keeps installing random games on it like ugh...
Why use lite on Firefox/android, considering the normal one is available too?
Oh yeah my bad I mis-rememebered, I use lite on chrome pc and the regular mobile firefox
So you are using Firefox on Android which is frankly janky but not on computer where it actually shines ?
Still primarily Chrome but use Firefox for other accounts
Which model is that? I have a single "Moto" app on mine that is un-removable and that is all bloat I can find.
Moto G Power 5G 2024
It is a cheap phone I think I got it new at $160 and that's the thing it has 8GB of RAM, the pictures are subpar (blurring) but other than that it works for me, multi-app non-game
This is on Verizon but yeah it'll just install new games and say "Enjoy these new apps" I'm like wtf I think most recently one of the games it installed is Mahjong
How? Mozilla famously refused to add uBlock Origin lite to extension store
I was mis-remembering, elbatorated in another comment, I'm using regular UBO on android firefox
A more native open-source version:
https://github.com/0xCUB3/wBlock
I’ve been using wBlock and it is fantastic. It supports nearly identical functionality as compared to uBlock Origin Lite.
I'm wondering which ad blocker you've had success with...specifically I'm wondering:
- Does this also block ads on Youtube (in the browser)?
- Can this block Youtube Shorts (they're way too addictive for me)?
Control Panel for YouTube[^1] can block ads and Shorts in the browser
[^1]: https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube
I don't know about YT Shorts but Vinegar [0] blocks ads.
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303...
The best way to block YouTube Shorts is using a modified APK on Android. Plus, you don't get ads.
I'd almost use the "real" YouTube app with ads on, if I could disable Shorts entirely.
yes this blocks YouTube ads in the browser.
Would it work with Firefox iOS?
No, that browser does not support extensions.
I can'e even imagine browsing the web without ublock origin. How and Why Apple users endured it, I fail to comprehend.
Not everyone uses Safari. But even so there are plenty of capable ad blockers for it, uBlock Origin is far from the only option.
One annoying thing I have is, when I want to disable Adblock on some website (suspecting Adblock impair functionality, or where Adblock is not needed), I need to grant the extension full access before I can disable it.
Is there some trick I am missing?
Why not use a phone that allows you to use the full version ublock? Ios is everything that is wrong with software today in one package.
Care to elaborate what is so wrong with it?
It doesn't allow you to use the full version of uBlock.