I see that uBlock Origin is doomed by Google’s switch to Manifest v3 extensions, and Firefox is reporting also that it will no longer work soon. Reading about other ad blockers I find there is a consensus that AdGuard is nearly as good, so I gave it a try today. I do like to be able to block elements of a webpage, especially since I am using a 13" screen. The big banners at the top and bottom of, say, theglobeandmail.com, take up too much space. So to block an element I need the AdGuard app rather than the extension. A free trial is available so I installed it and found I could not enable the network extension (it just doesn’t show up in System Settings for approval). I read that LittleSnitch can interfere with it, and using an Automatic Proxy instead of the network extension is a workaround, so I enabled that in AdGuard’s settings. It seemed to work, and even does so in Safari.
But, and it’s a big but, all YouTube pages now tell me I’m not connected to the internet. Disabling the browser extension does not help, but uninstalling the AdGuard app brings back normality. And this is with me logged in to a YouTube Premium account.
Has anyone else got experience with AdGuard? Workarounds? I’m not going to pay for it unless I can make it work!
If you’re up for a DIY solution, have a look at setting up a Raspberry Pi with Pi-hole on your local network. A downside is that it’s DIY…but the upside is that you own the hardware, the software is open source and you have complete control over your ad blocking.
Before uBlock Origin I used to use a hosts file to block ads, but the convenience of blocking unwanted elements on a page is very useful.
I use a Pi (wth AdGuard Home rather than Pi-Hole) as @Halfsmoke suggests. But it is only a DNS blocker. It can do nothing about blocking elements within a page which do not use a separate tracker (or ad) DNS address.
AdGuard for Mac is still needed for fully featured blocking.
There is a new manifest-3 compliant “Ublock Origin Lite” version. I assume from the new name that it has degraded functionality due to the changes, but I’m not sure what that actually means.
https://ublockorigin.com/
(The lite one should be offered to you on this page if you open it with Chrome.)
Yes, I’ve tried it in Vivaldi, and it lacks all of the fine tuning that made Origin so grand, along with the ability to block page elements. There’s no version of it for Firefox as yet.
An update, there is a new version of AdGuard that correctly opens System Settings>Login Items and Extensions to enable the app to run. However, it still blocks all internet access, saying, falsely, there is no https version of a website available, or in the case of Youtube, that I am not connected to the internet. I’m certainly not going to pay for it until that is sorted out!
PS: reinstalled it and did not enable HTTPS Filtering; now everything works. Finally a proper ad blocker in Safari. I’ll try it for a few days and decide whether to buy. It is expensive ($89.90CDN) and I hope there will be a special offer again - I missed the one for Halloween, when it was $40.
Hello, I have not read about Firefox deprecating uBlock Origin anywhere… so far this only affects Google’s Chrome and potentially its derivatives. I am browser agnostic and use several, depending of the sites I visit. In the case of Safari on Mac I use 1Blocker (paid, available on the App Store), for Firefox and Zen (Mozilla based) I use uBlock Origin… also for Brave and Edge (Chromium based) uBlock Origin is working. As mentioned, there is a uBlock Origin Lite available that is in compliance with Manifest v3, but not as powerful… hope this helps.
Additional info I found on the subject: https://www.xda-developers.com/4-browsers-manifest-v2-ublock-origin/
uBlock Lite isn’t available for Firefox as yet, and as I said above, it does not allow for blocking page elements that are intrusive.
Firefox is going to be switching to Manifest v3 extensions next year, but has indicated that v2 extensions will still be available, for a start.
As for Safari, I have bought and installed 1Blocker, Wipr, ABP and Ka-Block! Even with all enabled, I don’t find them very effective.