15 ms·

Safari adopts the Chrome/Firefox extension model

443 points by soheilpro 6y ago

koolba 6y ago
Does this mean I can have them on an iPhone one day too? A true NoScript alone would be awesome.
- cgb223 6y ago
  Looks like the announcement specifically calls out the _Mac_ App Store, so at least not initially... I’d love ublock origin or HTTPS Everywhere on Mobile
  - lobster45 6y ago
    You can get Firefox mobile with extensions
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Can you? It doesn't look like they are supported: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
    - vanc_cefepime 6y ago
      Not with iOS. I just tried it on iOS, says extensions dont work. Is this Firefox on Android that has extensions?
      - systremor 6y ago
        Yes, it does; running uBlock Origin on mobile IceCat here without a hitch
      - gabrielsroka 6y ago
        Yes, and no. The old Firefox for Android supported many extensions. The new one that came out just a few weeks ago only supports about 10 extensions, including uBlock Origin. They should be adding more over time, though.
- gnicholas 6y ago
  No mention of iOS: > Safari web extensions are available in macOS 11 and later, and in macOS 10.14.6 or 10.15.6 with Safari 14 installed.
- Eric_WVGG 6y ago
  I’m dying to write an iOS Safari extension that will skip over Google AMP pages to real web.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    You can write Shortcuts that inject code into a page (really, a glorified bookmarklet) but you have to run them manually :(
  - NegativeLatency 6y ago
    This is what drove me to switch to duck duck go
    - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
      Yeah, I’ve been on DDG for a couple years now. It has not grown on me.
chrisbolt 6y ago
Announced back at WWDC: https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/apple-will-let-you-port-google-chrome-extensions-to-safari/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/apple-will-let-you-port-go...
mey 6y ago
If they are distributing via the App Store, I assume this means requiring the publisher to be paying the yearly $99 developer fee?
- dguo 6y ago
  Yes, and that is actually already the case. When Apple finished deprecating .safariextz extensions in favor of Safari App Extensions, they also killed the Safari Extensions Gallery in favor of distribution through the App Store. And as you assumed, the developer does have to pay the annual fee. See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/decimation.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/decimation.html
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    This is just ridiculous on the one hand it consolidates their existing tech. On the other hand it gives them too much control over web extensions as a result and they dont seem to have the nicest rep running the iOS app store.
- langitbiru 6y ago
  I already published browser extension to Firefox Add-Ons Marketplace and Chrome Web Store. Publishing on Firefox is free and publishing on Chrome is 5$ (one time fee). So the difference is quite stark.
jhatax 6y ago
I think this was only a matter of time. The Chrome extension model has become the de facto standard, has a large existing extension ecosystem and huge user base, and other browsers have adopted this model. While sticking to their own extension model would ensure that they remained in control, this is the right thing for users, both current and possible switchers. Here’s why: - Current Safari users can get the goodness of Chrome extensions, specifically the ones focused on privacy such as NoScript and uBlock. - Switchers from Chrome can feel familiar with Safari if their Chrome extensions are available to them in the new browser. - New macOS users don’t need to select a browser based on whether extensions are available for it or not. With extension availability out of the way, the discussion on macOS browsers is going to come back to UX, speed, and battery usage. UX is a personal choice. Based on my experience, Safari is the fastest and least battery hungry browser on macOS. Syncing using iCloud Just Works (TM) for my devices and account. YMMV. Net-net, kudos to the team for getting past their “Not Invented Here” instincts and going with the market flow.
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  Does ublock origin actually work? Saw on the github a couple of months ago that safari had some potentially problematic resource limits.
  - ms7m 6y ago
    It does not. There is a handful of APIs that are blocked. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_web_extensions/assessing_your_safari_web_extension_s_browser_compatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      I think a more charitable interpretation is "not implemented".
      - fomine3 6y ago
disparate_dan 6y ago
I’ve unfairly disregarded Safari on MacOS for years because it didn’t have parity with chrome/FF in terms of extensions. There’s uBlock of course, but I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and I can’t bear it without the RES extension. So now there’s hope.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  > I’ve unfairly disregarded Safari on MacOS for years because it didn’t have parity with chrome/FF in terms of extensions. That seems like a very fair reason to disregard a browser, imho.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  No support to make uBlock Origin work yet, sadly.
zappo2938 6y ago
To develop a large extension consider using webext-redux[0] and react-extension-boilerplate [1] [0] https://github.com/tshaddix/webext-redux https://github.com/tshaddix/webext-redux [1]https://github.com/kryptokinght/react-extension-boilerplate https://github.com/kryptokinght/react-extension-boilerplate.
- sb8244 6y ago
  Webext redux is one of my favorite libraries. I've built some great stuff with it (and its predecessor). One use case is to create a single page app feel on websites that aren't single page. We use it in Salesforce, specifically.
  - zappo2938 6y ago
    Can you share some solutions to pain points you encountered developing an extension?
    - sb8244 6y ago
      There's a lot that goes into it. Can you help guide the question a bit more and I'll be happy to give it a go?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - sb8244 6y ago
    Clarifying comment: I have used this in an extension that integrates with Salesforce. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.
- sktguha 6y ago
  Regd the webext I wonder how it passes the props from client to background pages ? It is a real problem if the props are not serialisable. Note that this kind of problem would not be there in a single page client and redux store on same window context
shpx 6y ago
> BlockingResponse not supported. > Blocking requests not supported. so uBlock Origin is not going to happen. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_web_extensions/assessing_your_safari_web_extension_s_browser_compatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf... https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/will_ublock_origin_back_to_macos_big_sur/fvoc7wk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/will_u...
- stephen_g 6y ago
  I really hope they will eventually come up with some arrangement to fix that (like being able to explicitly grant extra permissions to individual extensions). I've really missed uBlock Origin these last couple of years and the content blocking framework app I have instead just isn't anywhere near as good, and not being able to easily see what's being blocked is really annoying...
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  Couldn't an extension override window.fetch or window.XMLHttpRequest and kill requests, rewrite them to localhost, etc?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - silverwind 6y ago
    Won't work. Browsers don't use those APIs for when downloading page content.
- rayuela 6y ago
  Fuuuuuckkk! I got so excited for a minute there. My biggest regret moving from droid to apple was giving up ublock.
  - bartvk 6y ago
    Have you tried alternative solutions? I currently use NextDNS. It's DNS-based blocking and works decent enough on iOS devices. Not as good as uBlock, but I'm hoping that this will improve once we get OS-level configurable browsers in iOS 14.
skinnymuch 6y ago
Safari versions can never work on older Mac OSes, correct? I would love to stay on High Sierra or Mojave and get Safari 14. I’m assuming since it is so integrated into the OS, it uses Big Sur specific APIs and references. Too bad. I am happy enough with any macOS from a couple of years ago, but this Safari change is the first thing I can readily recall caring about for an upgrade. A lot of my reasoning is liking Safari being lightweight. Upgrading to Big Sur would probably far more than cancel out any gains of using Safari more. Safari still doesn’t appear to have profiles or an easy way to hack it. Good Safari web extensions that can help toward that might not come out that quickly if the extensions need some rework and packaging and be published with the $100/year fee.
- valleyer 6y ago
  Updates of Safari are made available for the two preceding releases of macOS. For example, Safari 13 shipped with Catalina, but it's also available for Mojave and High Sierra. Any OS features not available on those earlier OSes are disabled, of course, but Web features tend to be unaffected. For example, Safari 13 doesn't support dark mode on High Sierra.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    Oh awesome. I never noticed or thought about it before. Seems like this means web extensions will be available on Mojave. Looks like that’ll be my OS until I upgrade computers. Thanks.
- robertoandred 6y ago
  Safari has historically been released for the two previous versions of macOS.
Animats 6y ago
But not for IOS? They want you have to have an Apple developer account, even though the extension is cross-platform. We need a separate "WebExtensions Store" that's cross-browser.
saagarjha 6y ago
To summarize a couple of points about Safari's extension functionality for those that are not familiar with it: * Safari used to have a "legacy" (and proprietary) web extension API that was essentially a bundle of HTML/CSS/JavaScript and was (usually) distributed through the Safari Extensions Gallery. Distributing extensions this way was free. While never a huge platform due to Mac Safari's relatively low market share, it had a number of fairly decent extensions. * In OS X El Capitan Apple rolled their extensions signing program into the Apple developer program, which costs $100/year. Extensions that were not signed would be "untrusted" and would be quite annoying to install. Many extension developers openly criticized the move–some refused to continue supporting Safari. * Almost simultaneously, Apple introduced their content blocking API, where extensions could declare a list of what are essentially regular expressions to block content. This model is quite similar to Chrome's declarativeWebRequest API in that extensions have little flexibility at runtime to vet requests. This API works in Safari on macOS as well as 64-bit iOS devices. * With Safari 12 Apple deprecated the old web extensions model (no longer loading these) and introduced a new extensions model, App Extensions. These are native bundles that run out-of-process and communicate with JavaScript that you can inject into the page. Again, these bundles must be signed with a (paid) developer ID certificate and be sandboxed. Distribution via the App Store is recommended but not required. Any remaining extensions that share code across browsers (i.e. not using native code) are now locked out of the platform. * (This announcement, which is a rehash of the one at WWDC from this June) In Safari 14 Apple is supporting a conversion tool that converts your standard WebExtension into something that Safari can load, with the same signing and distribution restrictions as app extensions (costs money, sandbox). Many simple APIs are available, but there is the notable absence of the ability to block requests–so uBlock cannot be ported, for example. NoScript does not seem possible to implement either. * Safari on iOS has never supported extensions–this hasn't changed. The only extensibility available there is still just content blockers using declarative lists.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > Many simple APIs are available, but there is the notable absence Is there a list of WebExtension APIs that are supported / not supported? I could not find one at developer.apple.com
dozzman 6y ago
Waiting for moderators to change the post title to the original but less descriptive "Easily create web extensions for Safari."
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Hacker News does not like title editorialization, but it does not like information-light marketing titles either. I suspect it might stick around.
fancy_pantser 6y ago
This is really exciting for me! Apple reached out earlier this year to ask if they can use my own extension to test the conversion tool (porting from the Chrome version) and to demo it during WWDC. Of course, now I have to convert it myself for Safari 14 and distribute, but it seems straightforward. I hope RecipeFilter can expand to the major mobile browsers one day as well... Here's a clip from WWDC where they demo the ported extension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwh2y6VkzoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwh2y6VkzoA Chrome Web Store for it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlcdjbkdaegmljnnncfnhiioiadakae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc... Source code: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter The original HN comment that caused me to create the extension almost 3 years ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745914
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Cool! Did they have you sign a bunch of NDAs; did they end up working with you at all?
  - fancy_pantser 6y ago
    I did, yes. It was maybe a month in advance of WWDC and I wasn't able to talk about the coming changes to Safari with anyone. The couple of biz dev/relations/acquisitions people I met via email and video calls were very nice, but they didn't give me much at all in return for releasing permission for the recording and a quick-turnaround change to the extension to fix a couple things.
- kergonath 6y ago
  Thank you so much for this extension, it’s great!
- newscracker 6y ago
  I took a quick look at the extension and the honest intro video too. It looks great. Thanks a lot for creating this extension!
jonny383 6y ago
No uBlock, no thanks. Any battery saving improvements given by Safari is probably negated by the volume of ads getting thrown down my throat.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  Just curious, what sites aren’t taken care of by a decent Safari content blocker extension? I’ve been using content blockers on both macOS and iOS for years now, and for 99% of sites I visit look barely different from FF/Chrome w/uBO. If I run into weirdness with sites loading it’s usually due to something like the site doing something funky like piping content through a web worker.
  - kkarakk 6y ago
    Any homebrewed site nowadays has really aggressive ads that you need adblock to deal with since more reputable ad vendors won't deal with them.
  - soraminazuki 6y ago
    For me, Safari content blockers work very well except for a single website: mobile Reddit. Blocking the Reddit app promotion banner disables scrolling, and Safari content blockers aren't flexible enough to prevent this AFAIK.
- chrisbolt 6y ago
  uBlock is not the only ad blocker, and Safari supports many alternatives.
  - roboyoshi 6y ago
    unfortunately ublock is the only one I trust right now. What alternative would you recommend that is fully open source and trustable?
    - ratww 6y ago
      Firefox Focus for iOS seems to be open source, AdGuard and Ka-Block for macOS also seem to be, there might be more. About "trusting": Safari content blocking extensions don't access your page, they only tell the browser which elements to block and Safari handles it. Some commercial extensions have a "control panel" that has access to pages, but you can just not enable them (it's opt-in AFAIK) [1] [1] https://i.imgur.com/jH8DFc4.png https://i.imgur.com/jH8DFc4.png
mullingitover 6y ago
Safari still can't use uBlock, so I still can't use Safari. The content blockers on Safari on iOS are pretty much worthless. Mobile web on iOS is easily the worst part of the iPhone experience, but at least on MacOS there are other browsers. I can't fathom why Apple cripples Safari this way on the desktop. It's at a huge disadvantage, and remains so. Literally the only advantage for Safari in my experience is that it can actually play full-HD Netflix streams, where other browsers can't.
- truth_seeker 6y ago
  Try AdGuard extension on Safari
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    Looked into this - it looks like it's not much more than what you could do with a sufficiently advanced hosts file?
- kalleboo 6y ago
  > I can't fathom why Apple cripples Safari this way on the desktop Privacy. For every person installing uBlock Origin, there are going to be 10 people install SuperBlock WowBlocker which is actually just harvesting all the URLs they visit and sending them to some data farm.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    Saving me from myself is not the greatest strategy when all it accomplishes is to make me use a different browser that avoids this type of nanny treatment.
shivenigma 6y ago
IMHO, Safari is a restrictive browser. Even if they start using chrome models, their approval process and permission process can be a nightmare and may not be actually something that small/free extension makers should be doing.
erikrothoff 6y ago
It's going to be an interesting war to follow, but not to be in the middle of. Chrome is already nuking the current state of things by introducing sweeping changes in Manifest V3. The one that caught the mainstream was webRequests and breaking content blockers. What's not talked about is how moving the "background" process from a long lived hidden web page to a short lived, event based service worker, breaks the actually useful cases of extensions. For our RSS extension it breaks a bunch of things, like polling for updates in feeds, removes any sort of complex persistent storage like IndexedDB, the ability to open a websocket connection for a realtime connection to backend infrastructure (if the user chooses to use our cloud syncing). Now Chrome has also made a sweeping change by hiding all extensions you install by default. Hiding away the main interface element of the extension. This breaks the "unread" count or the point of the browser action. How many users will actually understand that they need to "pin" extensions to the toolbar? How many extensions will you have installed that you forgot to remove? It's like the 90s again. All other browsers have moved to Chrome's extension system, which by no means is a standard. Firefox has explicitly said they will support content blockers in their current form, but not their stance on Manifest V3. Safari has disabled a large portion of the API's, and being just released, what's their story for MV3? Since there is no standard there is no work to keep the API's in sync. Firefox throws exceptions on parameters that Chrome supports. It's really demoralizing.
- jerrygoyal 6y ago
  how long will it take chrome team to introduce manifest v3 and drop support for v2? I hope they give sufficient time to devs for migration.
  - erikrothoff 6y ago
    Nobody knows. Their stated goal was release in 2020 with 1 year deprecation for MV2. Corona might have changed this. Their is no good source of information and the Chrome extension devrel team is woefully understaffed.
dvduval 6y ago
It seems feasible within a reasonable amount of time that the browser could have everything that an app would have, or at least close. But to me for reasons of profit, not user experience, companies like apple choose not to make this possible. I'm sure there's always a reasonable explanation of why I'm wrong. But I'd love to hear why.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Really hoping this means I can use uBlock Origin again, the adblocker selection for Safari is currently extremely poor.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sadly not at the moment :(
mumblerino 6y ago
This is pretty useless if developers have to pay $99/year and a Mac to publish. Most extensions still won’t appear on the Safari store.
- kkarakk 6y ago
  just realized i've had a mac since 2017 and only visited the safari store once
Pesthuf 6y ago
But only on macOS. That literally would be the one change that would make me adopt iOS, you know. I NEED userscripts.
ho_schi 6y ago
The most interesting thing here is, that this could bring support for WebExtensions to WebKitGtk! Therefore to Epiphany, which really need Extensions. Interestingly enough, I have the feeling leaving Gecko as foundation was a wise decision years go. And other webbrowsers like Midoria, Otter, Qute.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
whereistimbo 6y ago
my god. even for something simple you need xcode and join the apple developer program. $$$ for sure.
aasasd 6y ago
To my knowledge, Safari already had Chrome extensions working fine (before some conversion to native programs apparently). The problem wasn't in the extension support or even in the 100 bucks fee, but in their extension store's ineptitude in publishing whatever developers were trying to ship. ‘Reddit Enhancement Suite’ (iirc) stopped supporting Safari for that reason. Edit: not RES, they cite the move to native code as their point of divergence. But I remember reading somewhere about Safari store's unenthusiastic publishing of extensions.
The_rationalist 6y ago
I wonder when will webkit devs face their mediocrity and the reality of their Haiti level human resources poorness and make the not dumb move of switching to improving chromium just like microsoft do. It's only a matter of time before major webapps stops working on webkit
rvba 6y ago
Meanwhile Firefox alienates its current users by killing extensions and publishing an unfinished product.

443 points by soheilpro 6y ago

koolba 6y ago

Does this mean I can have them on an iPhone one day too? A true NoScript alone would be awesome.

cgb223 6y ago
Looks like the announcement specifically calls out the _Mac_ App Store, so at least not initially... I’d love ublock origin or HTTPS Everywhere on Mobile
- lobster45 6y ago
  You can get Firefox mobile with extensions
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Can you? It doesn't look like they are supported: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios
  - vanc_cefepime 6y ago
    Not with iOS. I just tried it on iOS, says extensions dont work. Is this Firefox on Android that has extensions?
    - systremor 6y ago
      Yes, it does; running uBlock Origin on mobile IceCat here without a hitch
    - gabrielsroka 6y ago
      Yes, and no. The old Firefox for Android supported many extensions. The new one that came out just a few weeks ago only supports about 10 extensions, including uBlock Origin. They should be adding more over time, though.
gnicholas 6y ago
No mention of iOS: > Safari web extensions are available in macOS 11 and later, and in macOS 10.14.6 or 10.15.6 with Safari 14 installed.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
I’m dying to write an iOS Safari extension that will skip over Google AMP pages to real web.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You can write Shortcuts that inject code into a page (really, a glorified bookmarklet) but you have to run them manually :(
- NegativeLatency 6y ago
  This is what drove me to switch to duck duck go
  - Eric_WVGG 6y ago
    Yeah, I’ve been on DDG for a couple years now. It has not grown on me.

chrisbolt 6y ago

Announced back at WWDC: https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/apple-will-let-you-port-google-chrome-extensions-to-safari/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/apple-will-let-you-port-go...

mey 6y ago

If they are distributing via the App Store, I assume this means requiring the publisher to be paying the yearly $99 developer fee?

dguo 6y ago
Yes, and that is actually already the case. When Apple finished deprecating .safariextz extensions in favor of Safari App Extensions, they also killed the Safari Extensions Gallery in favor of distribution through the App Store. And as you assumed, the developer does have to pay the annual fee. See https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/decimation.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/decimation.html
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  This is just ridiculous on the one hand it consolidates their existing tech. On the other hand it gives them too much control over web extensions as a result and they dont seem to have the nicest rep running the iOS app store.
langitbiru 6y ago
I already published browser extension to Firefox Add-Ons Marketplace and Chrome Web Store. Publishing on Firefox is free and publishing on Chrome is 5$ (one time fee). So the difference is quite stark.

jhatax 6y ago

I think this was only a matter of time. The Chrome extension model has become the de facto standard, has a large existing extension ecosystem and huge user base, and other browsers have adopted this model. While sticking to their own extension model would ensure that they remained in control, this is the right thing for users, both current and possible switchers. Here’s why: - Current Safari users can get the goodness of Chrome extensions, specifically the ones focused on privacy such as NoScript and uBlock. - Switchers from Chrome can feel familiar with Safari if their Chrome extensions are available to them in the new browser. - New macOS users don’t need to select a browser based on whether extensions are available for it or not. With extension availability out of the way, the discussion on macOS browsers is going to come back to UX, speed, and battery usage. UX is a personal choice. Based on my experience, Safari is the fastest and least battery hungry browser on macOS. Syncing using iCloud Just Works (TM) for my devices and account. YMMV. Net-net, kudos to the team for getting past their “Not Invented Here” instincts and going with the market flow.

NegativeLatency 6y ago
Does ublock origin actually work? Saw on the github a couple of months ago that safari had some potentially problematic resource limits.
- ms7m 6y ago
  It does not. There is a handful of APIs that are blocked. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_web_extensions/assessing_your_safari_web_extension_s_browser_compatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I think a more charitable interpretation is "not implemented".
    - fomine3 6y ago

disparate_dan 6y ago

I’ve unfairly disregarded Safari on MacOS for years because it didn’t have parity with chrome/FF in terms of extensions. There’s uBlock of course, but I spend a lot of time on Reddit, and I can’t bear it without the RES extension. So now there’s hope.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
> I’ve unfairly disregarded Safari on MacOS for years because it didn’t have parity with chrome/FF in terms of extensions. That seems like a very fair reason to disregard a browser, imho.
saagarjha 6y ago
No support to make uBlock Origin work yet, sadly.

zappo2938 6y ago

To develop a large extension consider using webext-redux[0] and react-extension-boilerplate [1] [0] https://github.com/tshaddix/webext-redux https://github.com/tshaddix/webext-redux [1]https://github.com/kryptokinght/react-extension-boilerplate https://github.com/kryptokinght/react-extension-boilerplate.

sb8244 6y ago
Webext redux is one of my favorite libraries. I've built some great stuff with it (and its predecessor). One use case is to create a single page app feel on websites that aren't single page. We use it in Salesforce, specifically.
- zappo2938 6y ago
  Can you share some solutions to pain points you encountered developing an extension?
  - sb8244 6y ago
    There's a lot that goes into it. Can you help guide the question a bit more and I'll be happy to give it a go?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- sb8244 6y ago
  Clarifying comment: I have used this in an extension that integrates with Salesforce. I'm not affiliated with them in any way.
sktguha 6y ago
Regd the webext I wonder how it passes the props from client to background pages ? It is a real problem if the props are not serialisable. Note that this kind of problem would not be there in a single page client and redux store on same window context

shpx 6y ago

> BlockingResponse not supported. > Blocking requests not supported. so uBlock Origin is not going to happen. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/safari_web_extensions/assessing_your_safari_web_extension_s_browser_compatibility https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf... https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/will_ublock_origin_back_to_macos_big_sur/fvoc7wk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/hdz0bo/will_u...

stephen_g 6y ago
I really hope they will eventually come up with some arrangement to fix that (like being able to explicitly grant extra permissions to individual extensions). I've really missed uBlock Origin these last couple of years and the content blocking framework app I have instead just isn't anywhere near as good, and not being able to easily see what's being blocked is really annoying...
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
Couldn't an extension override window.fetch or window.XMLHttpRequest and kill requests, rewrite them to localhost, etc?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- silverwind 6y ago
  Won't work. Browsers don't use those APIs for when downloading page content.
rayuela 6y ago
Fuuuuuckkk! I got so excited for a minute there. My biggest regret moving from droid to apple was giving up ublock.
- bartvk 6y ago
  Have you tried alternative solutions? I currently use NextDNS. It's DNS-based blocking and works decent enough on iOS devices. Not as good as uBlock, but I'm hoping that this will improve once we get OS-level configurable browsers in iOS 14.

skinnymuch 6y ago

Safari versions can never work on older Mac OSes, correct? I would love to stay on High Sierra or Mojave and get Safari 14. I’m assuming since it is so integrated into the OS, it uses Big Sur specific APIs and references. Too bad. I am happy enough with any macOS from a couple of years ago, but this Safari change is the first thing I can readily recall caring about for an upgrade. A lot of my reasoning is liking Safari being lightweight. Upgrading to Big Sur would probably far more than cancel out any gains of using Safari more. Safari still doesn’t appear to have profiles or an easy way to hack it. Good Safari web extensions that can help toward that might not come out that quickly if the extensions need some rework and packaging and be published with the $100/year fee.

valleyer 6y ago
Updates of Safari are made available for the two preceding releases of macOS. For example, Safari 13 shipped with Catalina, but it's also available for Mojave and High Sierra. Any OS features not available on those earlier OSes are disabled, of course, but Web features tend to be unaffected. For example, Safari 13 doesn't support dark mode on High Sierra.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Oh awesome. I never noticed or thought about it before. Seems like this means web extensions will be available on Mojave. Looks like that’ll be my OS until I upgrade computers. Thanks.
robertoandred 6y ago
Safari has historically been released for the two previous versions of macOS.

Animats 6y ago

But not for IOS? They want you have to have an Apple developer account, even though the extension is cross-platform. We need a separate "WebExtensions Store" that's cross-browser.

saagarjha 6y ago

To summarize a couple of points about Safari's extension functionality for those that are not familiar with it: * Safari used to have a "legacy" (and proprietary) web extension API that was essentially a bundle of HTML/CSS/JavaScript and was (usually) distributed through the Safari Extensions Gallery. Distributing extensions this way was free. While never a huge platform due to Mac Safari's relatively low market share, it had a number of fairly decent extensions. * In OS X El Capitan Apple rolled their extensions signing program into the Apple developer program, which costs $100/year. Extensions that were not signed would be "untrusted" and would be quite annoying to install. Many extension developers openly criticized the move–some refused to continue supporting Safari. * Almost simultaneously, Apple introduced their content blocking API, where extensions could declare a list of what are essentially regular expressions to block content. This model is quite similar to Chrome's declarativeWebRequest API in that extensions have little flexibility at runtime to vet requests. This API works in Safari on macOS as well as 64-bit iOS devices. * With Safari 12 Apple deprecated the old web extensions model (no longer loading these) and introduced a new extensions model, App Extensions. These are native bundles that run out-of-process and communicate with JavaScript that you can inject into the page. Again, these bundles must be signed with a (paid) developer ID certificate and be sandboxed. Distribution via the App Store is recommended but not required. Any remaining extensions that share code across browsers (i.e. not using native code) are now locked out of the platform. * (This announcement, which is a rehash of the one at WWDC from this June) In Safari 14 Apple is supporting a conversion tool that converts your standard WebExtension into something that Safari can load, with the same signing and distribution restrictions as app extensions (costs money, sandbox). Many simple APIs are available, but there is the notable absence of the ability to block requests–so uBlock cannot be ported, for example. NoScript does not seem possible to implement either. * Safari on iOS has never supported extensions–this hasn't changed. The only extensibility available there is still just content blockers using declarative lists.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
> Many simple APIs are available, but there is the notable absence Is there a list of WebExtension APIs that are supported / not supported? I could not find one at developer.apple.com

dozzman 6y ago

Waiting for moderators to change the post title to the original but less descriptive "Easily create web extensions for Safari."

saagarjha 6y ago
Hacker News does not like title editorialization, but it does not like information-light marketing titles either. I suspect it might stick around.

fancy_pantser 6y ago

This is really exciting for me! Apple reached out earlier this year to ask if they can use my own extension to test the conversion tool (porting from the Chrome version) and to demo it during WWDC. Of course, now I have to convert it myself for Safari 14 and distribute, but it seems straightforward. I hope RecipeFilter can expand to the major mobile browsers one day as well... Here's a clip from WWDC where they demo the ported extension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwh2y6VkzoA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwh2y6VkzoA Chrome Web Store for it: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlcdjbkdaegmljnnncfnhiioiadakae https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/recipe-filter/ahlc... Source code: https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter https://github.com/sean-public/RecipeFilter The original HN comment that caused me to create the extension almost 3 years ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745914

saagarjha 6y ago
Cool! Did they have you sign a bunch of NDAs; did they end up working with you at all?
- fancy_pantser 6y ago
  I did, yes. It was maybe a month in advance of WWDC and I wasn't able to talk about the coming changes to Safari with anyone. The couple of biz dev/relations/acquisitions people I met via email and video calls were very nice, but they didn't give me much at all in return for releasing permission for the recording and a quick-turnaround change to the extension to fix a couple things.
kergonath 6y ago
Thank you so much for this extension, it’s great!
newscracker 6y ago
I took a quick look at the extension and the honest intro video too. It looks great. Thanks a lot for creating this extension!

jonny383 6y ago

No uBlock, no thanks. Any battery saving improvements given by Safari is probably negated by the volume of ads getting thrown down my throat.

kitsunesoba 6y ago
Just curious, what sites aren’t taken care of by a decent Safari content blocker extension? I’ve been using content blockers on both macOS and iOS for years now, and for 99% of sites I visit look barely different from FF/Chrome w/uBO. If I run into weirdness with sites loading it’s usually due to something like the site doing something funky like piping content through a web worker.
- kkarakk 6y ago
  Any homebrewed site nowadays has really aggressive ads that you need adblock to deal with since more reputable ad vendors won't deal with them.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  For me, Safari content blockers work very well except for a single website: mobile Reddit. Blocking the Reddit app promotion banner disables scrolling, and Safari content blockers aren't flexible enough to prevent this AFAIK.
chrisbolt 6y ago
uBlock is not the only ad blocker, and Safari supports many alternatives.
- roboyoshi 6y ago
  unfortunately ublock is the only one I trust right now. What alternative would you recommend that is fully open source and trustable?
  - ratww 6y ago
    Firefox Focus for iOS seems to be open source, AdGuard and Ka-Block for macOS also seem to be, there might be more. About "trusting": Safari content blocking extensions don't access your page, they only tell the browser which elements to block and Safari handles it. Some commercial extensions have a "control panel" that has access to pages, but you can just not enable them (it's opt-in AFAIK) [1] [1] https://i.imgur.com/jH8DFc4.png https://i.imgur.com/jH8DFc4.png

mullingitover 6y ago

Safari still can't use uBlock, so I still can't use Safari. The content blockers on Safari on iOS are pretty much worthless. Mobile web on iOS is easily the worst part of the iPhone experience, but at least on MacOS there are other browsers. I can't fathom why Apple cripples Safari this way on the desktop. It's at a huge disadvantage, and remains so. Literally the only advantage for Safari in my experience is that it can actually play full-HD Netflix streams, where other browsers can't.

truth_seeker 6y ago
Try AdGuard extension on Safari
- mullingitover 6y ago
  Looked into this - it looks like it's not much more than what you could do with a sufficiently advanced hosts file?
kalleboo 6y ago
> I can't fathom why Apple cripples Safari this way on the desktop Privacy. For every person installing uBlock Origin, there are going to be 10 people install SuperBlock WowBlocker which is actually just harvesting all the URLs they visit and sending them to some data farm.
- mullingitover 6y ago
  Saving me from myself is not the greatest strategy when all it accomplishes is to make me use a different browser that avoids this type of nanny treatment.

shivenigma 6y ago

IMHO, Safari is a restrictive browser. Even if they start using chrome models, their approval process and permission process can be a nightmare and may not be actually something that small/free extension makers should be doing.

erikrothoff 6y ago

It's going to be an interesting war to follow, but not to be in the middle of. Chrome is already nuking the current state of things by introducing sweeping changes in Manifest V3. The one that caught the mainstream was webRequests and breaking content blockers. What's not talked about is how moving the "background" process from a long lived hidden web page to a short lived, event based service worker, breaks the actually useful cases of extensions. For our RSS extension it breaks a bunch of things, like polling for updates in feeds, removes any sort of complex persistent storage like IndexedDB, the ability to open a websocket connection for a realtime connection to backend infrastructure (if the user chooses to use our cloud syncing). Now Chrome has also made a sweeping change by hiding all extensions you install by default. Hiding away the main interface element of the extension. This breaks the "unread" count or the point of the browser action. How many users will actually understand that they need to "pin" extensions to the toolbar? How many extensions will you have installed that you forgot to remove? It's like the 90s again. All other browsers have moved to Chrome's extension system, which by no means is a standard. Firefox has explicitly said they will support content blockers in their current form, but not their stance on Manifest V3. Safari has disabled a large portion of the API's, and being just released, what's their story for MV3? Since there is no standard there is no work to keep the API's in sync. Firefox throws exceptions on parameters that Chrome supports. It's really demoralizing.

jerrygoyal 6y ago
how long will it take chrome team to introduce manifest v3 and drop support for v2? I hope they give sufficient time to devs for migration.
- erikrothoff 6y ago
  Nobody knows. Their stated goal was release in 2020 with 1 year deprecation for MV2. Corona might have changed this. Their is no good source of information and the Chrome extension devrel team is woefully understaffed.

dvduval 6y ago

It seems feasible within a reasonable amount of time that the browser could have everything that an app would have, or at least close. But to me for reasons of profit, not user experience, companies like apple choose not to make this possible. I'm sure there's always a reasonable explanation of why I'm wrong. But I'd love to hear why.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Really hoping this means I can use uBlock Origin again, the adblocker selection for Safari is currently extremely poor.

saagarjha 6y ago
Sadly not at the moment :(

mumblerino 6y ago

This is pretty useless if developers have to pay $99/year and a Mac to publish. Most extensions still won’t appear on the Safari store.

kkarakk 6y ago
just realized i've had a mac since 2017 and only visited the safari store once

Pesthuf 6y ago

But only on macOS. That literally would be the one change that would make me adopt iOS, you know. I NEED userscripts.

ho_schi 6y ago

The most interesting thing here is, that this could bring support for WebExtensions to WebKitGtk! Therefore to Epiphany, which really need Extensions. Interestingly enough, I have the feeling leaving Gecko as foundation was a wise decision years go. And other webbrowsers like Midoria, Otter, Qute.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

whereistimbo 6y ago

my god. even for something simple you need xcode and join the apple developer program. $$$ for sure.

aasasd 6y ago

To my knowledge, Safari already had Chrome extensions working fine (before some conversion to native programs apparently). The problem wasn't in the extension support or even in the 100 bucks fee, but in their extension store's ineptitude in publishing whatever developers were trying to ship. ‘Reddit Enhancement Suite’ (iirc) stopped supporting Safari for that reason. Edit: not RES, they cite the move to native code as their point of divergence. But I remember reading somewhere about Safari store's unenthusiastic publishing of extensions.

The_rationalist 6y ago

I wonder when will webkit devs face their mediocrity and the reality of their Haiti level human resources poorness and make the not dumb move of switching to improving chromium just like microsoft do. It's only a matter of time before major webapps stops working on webkit

rvba 6y ago

Meanwhile Firefox alienates its current users by killing extensions and publishing an unfinished product.