21 ms·
Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker
- danvayn 11y agooh my lord
- buffoon 11y agoThis makes me wish we had extensions in Chrome on Android. uBlock would be very welcome.
- HarshaThota 11y agoWhy not give Firefox a try then? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fi...
- buffoon 11y agoThree reasons: I want my stuff synced with my desktop running Chrome and it's horrible to use and drinks battery. (I have already tried it)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Yetanfou 11y agoIs your device rooted? If so, install AdAway (from the fdroid repo) or a similar host-based blocker. This takes care of a large part of the ad-related misery. I do run Firefox (well, Fennec, really, minus the obnoxious bits which Mozilla has been slipping in recently) on a 4 year old Motorola Defy. The battery lasts for about 5 days so I don't think that bit about FF 'drink[ing] battery' is correct, at least not in my case. I do not have uBlock (or any other blocker) installed as the hosts-based solution is sufficient for now.
- buffoon 11y agoNo it's not rooted and I can't deploy our device policy on rooted devices (this is a company phone; a moto g 3rd gen). I had terrible battery problems on a moto g2 about a year ago which is what I'm basing my opinion on so that may be invalid now.
- Nexxxeh 11y agoOh man, what a difference a year makes. I gave up on FF when it was a freshly laid turd. I tried it again a few months back on a recommendation from HN. Whoa. They've managed to polish it into a diamond. You'd have to prize Firefox and uBlock (on my first gen Moto G) out of my cold dead hands.
- buffoon 11y agoDownloading now. You have at least persuaded me to have another go at it :)
- Nexxxeh 11y agoLoad in uBlock, and if you use it, Lastpass. I browsed The Verge site just fine. (The images took a little longer to load than I expected, but I checked and same happens on the desktop. So it's a shitty ISP/CDN/Optimization problem rather than a browser one.)
- mahouse 11y agoFirefox on Android is awful. Try to load any mildly heavy webpage (such as Verge) and scroll through it, you'll see how it struggles. (This on a Nexus 5.)
- Grue3 11y agoThe solution is not to load awfully slow webpages like Verge (see [1]), not to mention their content has been sub-par for a long time. [1] http://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/ http://blog.lmorchard.com/2015/07/22/the-verge-web-sucks/
- mahouse 11y agoVerge is liberal trash, but that does not mean it cannot be used as a benchmark. That said, it can be browsed well on Chrome, so it should work on Fx as well.
- inDigiNeous 11y agoFirefox on Android works great with uBlock Origin. Support open source! I noticed a great difference on my 2011 Google Nexus 3 between adblock and uBlock Origin, in terms of memory usage.
- wtvanhest 11y agoIs anyone working on a machine learning ad blocker?
- prince_boa 11y agoThere is also an app from the ublock guy but it costs about 4$/€. https://www.purify-app.com/ https://www.purify-app.com/
- pvg 11y agoThat's an app from the guy who took over uBlock on Safari, the uBlock guy is the guy who wrote uBlock and not the same person.
- LoSboccacc 11y agoso, uhm, is him reputable? I'd hate to install and ad blocker only to make the problem worse.
- LeoNatan25 11y agoDon't worry, the app is legit, and is good.
- jd3 11y agoin terms of skill, the current ublock maintainer seems to be a kid with little to no skill who is not updating the project and instead milking it for money. I'm sure the iOS implementation is sound though.
- Maxious 11y agoSee also "Peace" by Marco Arment which uses data from Ghostery (and shutup.css... removing comments from sites like HN) https://peace.land/ https://peace.land/
- LeoNatan25 11y agoThat one focuses more on privacy protection than ad blocking. I think using Peace in combination of a blocker app would be best route.
- robin_reala 11y agoOne thing I like about Ghostery is the ability to block just beacons, tracking scripts etc while leaving ads available. Is this something Peace can do?
- kennydude 11y agoDoesn't appear so. The options in the app are: * Block ads and trackers * Block social widgets * Block external fonts * Hide comments
- robin_reala 11y agoOK, thanks. Will contact the dev to see if it’s planned functionality.
- micampe 11y agoI'd like Peace in reverse: with a blacklist instead of a whitelist.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ratfacemcgee 11y agoits not Crystals fault, but its disappointing that this kind of ad blocking is unavailable for 32bit devices, like iPhone 5/5c (and below).
- Doctor_Fegg 11y agoIndeed. I find it curious that it's not available for "performance reasons" - surely rendering an ad takes more CPU than blocking one?
- LoSboccacc 11y agoMaybe it refers to the RAM constraints more. They just call out the devices, but the actual constraint might or might not be the CPU on old devices new safari already struggle to keep in memory more than a couple tabs, so gut instinct points to memory being the issue.
- tdkl 11y agoYou can compile and sideload an open source content blocker on a 32bit device. But performance on some sites is slower then without blocking because of the regex performance difference, it's almost 50% slower. I'd quote the statement from a dev on reddit, but can't remember where it was.
- msephton 11y agowhat regex? content blocking compiles the source regex to byte code which is executed natively. the 32-bit hang up is because of performance of compiling the rules, not executing them.
- giovannibajo1 11y agoIt should be true, but the reality is that most ad blockers have such a complex ruleset to match that they can actually go slower and use more RAM than not running them. The graphs that uBlock shows are very compelling: https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock I'm not saying that Apple tried hard enough; the content blockers on iOS are JIT-compiled to native ARM 64-bit code, so maybe they didn't have the codepath ready for 32-bit and/or they didn't bother. But it's surely not just a technical excuse.
- methou 11y agoFinally. Will disconnect.me soon provide an iOS Safari plugin? edit: more specified to iOS.
- lstamour 11y agoJust bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught, but Peace was the only one that seriously removed all the cruft causing slowdowns, even Google+ news site pop ups and like button pinned banners from The Verge in addition to blocking ads. So my recommendations are Crystal for price, Peace for well, exactly what it says on the tin, and Purify if you'd like to block images and scripts also. Check screenshots of each for the latest on their preference panels.
- lstamour 11y agoThat said, none are perfect. Swapping between all three and reloading Slate.com, it seemed impossible to block an after-page-load ad inserted at the top of the article via JS. Except when I ran Purify with Scripts disabled on Slate, then the page loaded instantly with no ad for obvious reasons. (Sadly Purify is missing an extension to selectively enable JS.) Searching the store, Blockr looks nice enough, specifically calling out blocking of Cookie Warnings, but other than that, seems like a more configurable Crystal with features of Peace. 1Blocker which I have yet to use, currently takes the cake on configurability -- perhaps too much so -- it lets you turn on and off individual rules as well as add your own by typing in the filter directly.
- blub 11y agoCan't one keep more than a single blocker active at the same time?
- LeoNatan25 11y agoYou can enable more than one blocker at a time.
- ytch 11y agoIn Setting ->Safari -> Content Blocker, You can Enable/Disable each one, so you may enable all at the same time
- stephenr 11y agoThis looks like its nice and simple, but does anyone know if there are any iOS9/El Capitan content blockers that support sync'd granular management of the actual block list?
- tdkl 11y agoSafari Blocker: http://blog.appgrounds.com/safari-blocker-preview/ http://blog.appgrounds.com/safari-blocker-preview/ It's in App Store review and should be out shortly.
- Someone 11y ago"This app is not compatible with your device" iPad (first generation with retina screen, I think), running iOS 9. What gives?
- LeoNatan25 11y agoContent blocking requires a 64-bit CPU.
- heinrich5991 11y agoInteresting. Why is that?
- LeoNatan25 11y agoAsk Apple :) See this tweet: https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638510622167052288 https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638510622167052288 Apparently, content blockers work on 32-bit CPUs, but Apple is restricting them on the store to 64-bit only. So you can go the BlockParty + EasyList route: https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty It works very well.
- Armand_Grillet 11y agoAnother open-source iOS 9 content blocker here, using EasyList and EasyPrivacy: https://github.com/ArmandGrillet/Adios https://github.com/ArmandGrillet/Adios (I'm the guy behind this project).
- pinewurst 11y agoAs a data point, I just built/installed BlockParty on iPhone 5 and iPad Retina and see nothing but performance improvement. Many thanks again for the link!
- ytch 11y agoApple only says: Note: Apps containing content blocking extensions for Safari on iOS are available only on 64-bit devices, due to performance limitations of 32-bit devices. https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releasenotes/General/WhatsNewInSafari/Articles/Safari_9.html https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...
- LargeCompanies 11y agoIs it just me or does it seem Apple is trying to put a hurt on Google and in turn hurt the web simultaneously. Safari has so many awful bugs that it's reminding me of the days of when you had to develop specifically for IE6. Such tactics are reminiscent of when Microsoft ruled the land and well that didnt turn out so great for MS.
- stephenr 11y agoApple is continuing it's now well-publicised push for enhanced/improved privacy for users of it's devices and services. Apple don't provide any content blocking out of the box, they provide the ability for users to install a plugin/extension of their own choosing if they wish. You don't have to use this to block google ads, or google analytics if you don't want to. But many people will, because the amount of data Google collects (or attempts to collect) every day is fucking scary to a lot of people.
- tdkl 11y agoApple also doesn't invest in the web like Google does because : - the majority of its revenue ain't ads, search, services, - they actually have a desktop platform. Google is trying to make the web as a panacea for specially this reason. I remember reading this comment on Grubers site (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/15/ppk-stop-pushing-web-forward http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/15/ppk-stop-pushing...) and personally I agree with him and Koch.
- danbee 11y agohttp://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/16/because-of-apple http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/16/because-of-apple
- bbayer 11y agoI am curious how this will impact the web. Ads are the only revenue stream for most of the sites. Blocking ads is good for user experience but when you think from publishers site how will they survive? "I like ads because I can support people I like without even spending a dime" said one of my friends. I cannot agree more because there are plenty of people on mid and small scale try to earn living with the content they provide.
- stephenr 11y agoSo use an ad network that doesn't unnecessarily track me across the entire web, destroy my battery life, and make reading content (particularly on mobile) a game of 'find the article' amongst the shit storm of ads. The number of things that everyday sites embed in their pages is phenomenal. The Ghostery extension gives a good idea about how much crap gets loaded. In an article about content blockers, http://www.imore.com/and-hour-safari-content-blockers-and-imore http://www.imore.com/and-hour-safari-content-blockers-and-im... has 13 separate, third-party scripts/etc trying to load. 6 tagged as 'analytics', 4 tagged as 'advertising', 3 tagged as 'social widgets' That is a ridiculous amount of extra requests, extra data, and of course, tracking. The advertising (and since the obsession with 'cloud' or 'SAAS', analytics too) industry has been fucking end-users for YEARS. Now users have a credible way to fight back, and suddenly it's "not fair?". If you want advertising to fund your site/blog/whatever, use an ad network that doesn't try to digitally fuck me every time I visit your site. edit: grammar
- chris-at 11y agoDoes it actually work? (yes I enabled it in settings) I tried arstechnica.com and it's still showing ads. With Mercury (which always had its own ad blocker) there are no ads.
- interpol_p 11y agoI had to kill Safari and reload pages a few times before it started working. Once it did, though, the speed difference was the most obvious thing about it.
- perishabledave 11y agoIntentional or not, allowing ad blocking on the mobile web should push content creators that rely on ad revenue to develop native applications. This seems like a double win for Apple.
- aqwwe 11y agoif Apple allows blocking of ads on the web, it should allow blocking of ads on native apps also...
- lukeholder 11y agoPSA: If any content blocker is breaking a page you can touch the refresh button in mobile safari for 2 seconds and an option to reload the page without content blockers will appear.
- joeblau 11y agoThanks for that top tip! Just tried it on Bloomberg and it worked.
- codewithcheese 11y agoCan any one point to a rule set for this or other IOS blockers. Interested to take a look. Do they use much customization for mobile ads or are they just using the same lists as ABP?
- graystevens 11y agoReceived their 'Out Now' email yesterday, after signing up from the post here on HN regarding the app and its beta testing phase. Don't have a problem with what I received, in fact it was something I was hoping to play with after installing the iOS9 GM, so was very happy to be notified very shortly after its release. What I wasn't keen on however, was the use of emoji's in the subject. This instantly got deleted by myself due to their appearance at the beginning of the subject line. It was only a split second after I'd hit delete that I thought I caught a glimpse of 'Crystal' or at least a word of interest. Is this now a thing, emoji's in email subjects?
- klausa 11y agoYes.
- wanderfowl 11y agoLanguage change, oh horror of horrors.
- alkonaut 11y agoJust wow. I have used Adblock on desktop before and didn't realize how much difference it does on mobile. On desktop it just removes clutter but on mobile it truly changes the whole browsing experience. This will be huge. Almost none of my non-techie friends use Adblock on desktop but everyone will be using an iOS blocker. This will hurt sites big time, and I feel sorry for sites that weren't using the big bad ad networks but still get blocked (whether that happens I'm not sure). The question is -- is it too late to go back and make advertising "right" now? Will sites that use non-intrusive and non-tracking ads be just as blocked as those who do, or does these blockers give no incentive to improve, only to circumvent?
- tdkl 11y agoI'm probably getting Blockr (http://blockr-app.com/ http://blockr-app.com/ , .99€) just for the option to block the idiotic cookie warning overlays brought by the "cookie law". The rest of the options looks tempting too, specially social buttons blocker. Btw, if someone's interested in the same cookie warning blocking using uBlock/ABP, here's a cool list: https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list https://github.com/r4vi/block-the-eu-cookie-shit-list
- msephton 11y agoI was expecting more from Crystal, given the pre-release press it was stirring up. No whitelist? Plus really ropey looking UI.
- greggman 11y agoSo when will apple add the OS level ad blocker for ads and tracking in apps. What's special about blocking web ads and tracking?
- monochromatic 11y agoApps use Apple's ad system. Web doesn't.