What ad blocker do you prefer?

TidBITS Talk
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Would you please share your thoughts on which ad blocker to use?

Thank you.

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I wrote about this several years ago, when I was using AdBlock Plus.

Today, I’m using uBlock Origin on Firefox, using mostly the same filter lists:

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Was there a particular reason that you switched from AdBlock Plus?

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I still rely on Better Blocker for Safari, even though it was discontinued five years ago. Nothing else quite matches it for simplicity and effectiveness, in my experience.

Unfortunately, it was only available via the Apple Store, so it is almost impossible to find an installer.

The authors recommend 1Blocker, but I find it lets significantly more things through. I wish someone would create an alternative that works as well as Better.app.

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I switched from AdBlock plus because they made a change to the “allow list” that I found unacceptable.

If you tell ABP to allow advertising on a site, the setting only sticks for a week. More precisely, if you haven’t visited a site for more than 7 days, it is auto-removed from the allow list. So if there’s a site I don’t visit frequently, but where I want to allow ads, I need to explicitly click the button to allow the ads every time I visit the site.

At the time I stopped using ABP, there was no configuration option (that I know of) to disable this behavior.

In contrast, UBO doesn’t do this. When I tell it to allow advertising on a site, it will allow advertising on that site forever (or until I explicitly remove that configuration).

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Recently, Youtube has stepped up the intrusiveness of their ads as well as their length. I found that I would often need to wait 10+ minutes before the video ran. I tried the usual ad blockers (1blocker, etc.) and found that the only one which removed Google’s ads was AdGuard. It was free.

Since Google is going after ad blockers, my choice may not work for long but it works well now. It is interesting that the only device free from Youtube ads was my iPhone. Everything else (my several macs and an iPad mini 5) was subject to a barrage of ads.

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Interesting. Although I’ve seen some very long ads (some as long as an hour - full infomercials), the “Skip” button has always appeared no longer than 1 minute into it (and many times, sooner).

But most of my YouTube viewing these is on my Apple TV. It may be different in a web browser.

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Yes, I was using Safari. Firefox had the same problem.

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If you are open to using the DuckDuckGo browser, it has a built-in YouTube viewer that pretty much eliminates everything except the main video from YouTube pages.

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Thanks, I’ll give it a try. I already use their search engine.

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Safari: AdGuard for Safari
Firefox & Chrome: Adblock Plus & Privacy Badger

I don’t block ads in general, they pay for the free web, after all. What I block is ad servers & scripts that engage in bad behavior.

So, on AdGuard & Adblock the only lists I subscribe to are:

  • Adblock Warning Removal (which doesn’t work very well)
  • Online Malicious URL
  • NoCoin (blocks bitcoin mining scripts)

I do, however, use a short list of 41 custom rules, which as I said, block ad servers or scripts that have exhibited bad behavior. This includes:

  • Contextual ads, such as when it changes key words in the web page to be links (intellitxt, kontera, skimresources, viglink)
  • Modification of cut-and-paste text (tynt.com, license.icopyright.net)
  • Modification of the back button (exitjunction.com)
  • Interstitial ads
  • Auto-play of video ads with sound
  • Ads that cover up the web content

Privacy Badger is blocking tracking cookies.

So, I think I’m on firm ethical ground.*

* but as it turns out, a lot of ad servers have served ads with bad behavior or depend on tracking cookies, and don’t appear when you block them!

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If you are looking for the same non-intrusive YouTube experience on Mac as you enjoy on iPhone, I suggest you try out Vinegar. It forces YouTube to stream through the OS’ built-in player for HTML5, rather than letting YouTube hijack your Mac Safari. It’s not free, it’s a one-time $2 purchase from the MAS. IMHO probably some of the best $2 I’ve ever spent on the MAS.

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Thanks, I have Vinegar installed with its icon just to the left of the address bar. It doesn’t help with ads.

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That’s been my experience as well. The ad networks don’t seem to screen the ads they distribute. Or if they do, they don’t do a good enough job of it. So a lot of bad stuff gets through.

When I was running ABP, I would check the box to “allow some non-intrusive advertising”, but I don’t think very many ad networks actually qualify.

These days, I whitelist specific sites that I want to support and those that break if I don’t, but everything else gets blocked. I would rather I didn’t have to, but my computer’s security and stability is more important to me than a site’s revenue stream.

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uBlock Origin (in its low-calorie Lite form) is again available for Safari. I replaced my old ad blocking schemes with it when it came out, and it has worked well for me.

‎uBlock Origin Lite on the App Store

I also use StopTheMadnessPro to override some site behaviors, including on YouTube, though that’s not strictly an ad blocker.

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There’s two Vinegars. “Classic” Vinegar and the new Vinegar. They don’t both achieve identical results and they shouldn’t both be run at the same time. Try switching between the two.

Also, sometimes a simple reload of the YouTube page is necessary to get the page to load with the right HTML5 player and start playing without the ads. I’ve even experienced situations where a 2nd reload was necessary.

Finally, I’d also suggest using an adserver/tracker blocker in conjunction with Vinegar. Ka-Block! is free and requires zero configuration. With Vinegar and Ka-Block! I do not see any YouTube ads or interruptions on Safari 18.6. Ka-Block! is 100% free (and open source).

BTW, Ka-Block! also exists for iPhone Safari. Also free.

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uBlock Origin is the best as far as I’m concerned, it not only blocks ads it allows you to select and delete various page items. On my 13" MBA screen, a banner across the top, and another across the bottom of the screen leaves little room to read the content between them. So I get uBO to remove them and they stay gone.
However, with the new format for extensions it might be that uBO goes away, and so I have invested in a license for AdGuard, which does nearly all the same things but without such a fine level of control. It also conflicts with Little Snitch. One thing AdGuard does that uBO cannot is work with Safari, but the lack of other valuable extensions keeps me from using Safari except where it is required. uBO Lite works with Safari, but doesn’t allow for element-blocking.

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Ka-Block! was my mainstay adblocker for Safari until uBO(L) returned.

One concern I had is that Ka-Block! hasn’t been updated in four years (last app store release Nov 6, 2021) , and that includes filter lists. The project git repo has had only some basic housekeeping commits since then. It still works pretty well, since ad networks evolve slowly, and it’s still what I suggest for older systems. But I’m not sure of its future.

ELement selection seems a little clunky on the desktop version, but it’s there.

What it lacks, mainly, is the option to add filter lists.

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I use Wipr for mobile and macOS on Safari. The developer updates the app regularly; I know a lot of her work is re-enabling YouTube ad blocking. She’s also developing a companion app for mobile called Filtr for the upcoming releases of version 26 which will enable blocking for apps rather than just for Safari.

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That’s indeed true. But I have in my daily browsing not noticed any detrimental effect, up to an including Sequoia.

I find your post very interesting though because I went the exact other way around! :laughing:
I tried uBO and reverted to Ka-Block! simply because with uBO I had way too much abusive ad garbage sneak through even after extensive configuring effort. OTOH with Ka-Block! I have nothing at all to configure and nevertheless see far less seep in, at least on the sites I frequent.