When we upgraded they wanted us to disable the old ones because they would slow down the program. Now I am sick of the ads. What do people use to block ads in Safari
This review recommends 1Blocker X.
I use Adguard.
https://adguard.com/en/adguard-mac/overview.html
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Not sure if you are asking about MacOS or iOS. On MacOS I use one called āBetterā. Itās not as aggressive as 1Blocker in my experience, but still catches enough to make browsing reasonable. On iOS, I switch between Better and 1BlockerX. I think I prefer Better. (If you report a problem with a site, the developer is VERY responsive. Thankfully, Iāve only had two sites with issues.)
Better: https://better.fyi/
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Install the Reader extension in Safari and set it under Safari/Websites/Reader/When visiting other website to āOnā - voila! no ads visible in almost all cases.
Thus no need to use any adblocker.
I use 1Blocker on Mac and iOS. Very happy with it.
I also use 1Blocker (upgraded to 1BlockerX on iOS) and like it. On the Mac Iām also using Adblock Plus, and previously used Ghostery. All seem pretty decent.
Just a note, that Ghostery is not at itās best as an adblocker, rather it blocks trackers. There is some degree of overlap, but users normally benefit from using both types of extensions/add-ons.
Despite the Safari warning that it āmay slow your browserā, I still use the incredibly powerful uBlock Origin extension (by overriding the Safari warning).
(Note: do not confuse it with the awful forked ripoff version using the same name available through the Mac App Store!! Or the same garbage that tries to google-Jack you at uBlock.org; it steals the name, but doesnāt hold a candle to the fork it stole. )
Iāve tried a bunch of blockers, and uBlock remains my favorite on macOS. I wish I could use 1Blocker X, as it is my favorite on iOS, as it would be nice to keep rules, whitelist and blacklist in sync, but I find itās just too buggy and badly neglected on Mac.
Iām not impressed at all by AdBlock; Ghostery used to be good (but too intrusive), but is now pretty broken (and I think also disabled); I havenāt looked at Better for a long time, and probably should, since uBlock for Safari seems unlikely to ever be updated by the original contributors again due to the political stance on free software versus Appleās forced Developer license to get code signing and App Store availability.
That article seemed isolated to iOS, unless I skimmed it too quickly; isnāt OP asking after Safari for macOS?
My apologies if Iāve misdirected my opinions.
Yes for the Mac Safari, Although hearing about for an iOS device has been good too.
Ah, sorryāthe original post said nothing about platform and made only an oblique reference to an error message that must have been Mac-only.
But regardless, ad blocking is something that is a platform-independent topic, so all the posts have been welcome.
I have tried uBlock Origin on Safari (I used it when I used Chrome as my main browser). It was a great ad blocker for me, particularly on Chrome and Firefox. One thing about uBlock Origin compared with something like 1Blocker or Better is that I find it to be more useful for more technical users than āaverageā users. I was willing to tinker when Iād go to a site that wasnāt working right because of over-aggressive blocking by uBlock Origin. For somebody who is just looking for āset it and forget itā, I think that the other options might be better.
However, it is free.
I use 1Blocker [X] on macs and ios. I havenāt had any trouble with it on the macs (El Cap and Sierra), but I donāt use the 1Blocker Button part. There are a few sites that I need to whitelist; I generally do that in the Safari site settings.
My primary blockade on the Mac though is a massive hosts file. I donāt recommend itāit breaks a lot of sites completely (including many google services), itās not all that easy to turn on and off, and itās always either on for everything or off for everything. But it sure does stop a lot of cruft that the ad blockers donāt, and it can stop a lot of tracking from within apps other than browsers.
The hosts file is a system file that translates a dns name (example.com) to an IP address just like a DNS server does, but the hosts file is consulted first and if an entry is in there, the regular dns server isnāt consulted. All of the ābadā names are redirected to localhost, the actual computer. They fail, and they fail very fast. Hosts canāt block everythingāif a site or app uses specific IP numbers instead of names, hosts isnāt consulted and the connection goes through. To block IPs, you need a firewall which gets more complicated.
The file I use is aimed at Windows, but works fine on the mac. There are others that are even bigger. You need to use BBEdit or similar to install it. You should also update it every few months.
The hosts file I use (about 14,000 entries):
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
A recentish iMore article about why and how to edit /etc/hosts:
Thereās an open source utility for managing hosts files, Gas Mask, but I havenāt tried it yet:
Sadly, thereās no way to edit hosts on ios. Which may be just as well, because hosts can be used for evil as well as for goodā¦
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I use Better blocker (https://better.fyi) - not many things to configure, but it gets the job done pretty well.