4 ms·

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
  - least 6y ago
    There's a thread regarding this on github linked from gorhill's repo: https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 Also Adguard for Safari is GPL v3. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    You don't need to trust Safari content blockers because they can't access anything, they can just create static blocker rules. That's one of the key points of the system.
- newscracker 6y ago
  Safari supports content blockers, which are basically lists of content to block. AFAIK, there's also a limit (50K, IIRC?) to the number of rules that can be bundled within one extension. With the popular lists used with an extension like uBlock Origin, 50K is quite a small number. So multiple extensions would be required to get close to uBlock Origin, even if we dismiss element blocking rules and other features that uBlock Origin offers.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
I don't see any ads on Safari in macOS or iOS due to Firefox Focus and Wipr content blockers.
newscracker 6y ago
What you say is true to an extent. If you do not need the full power of uBlock Origin, may I suggest using NextDNS.io with added blocking filters (many popular filter lists are available there)? The other option would be a Pi-Hole. To reiterate, these are not full replacements for uBlock Origin, but they do help even when using uBlock Origin with a browser like Firefox.

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
- least 6y ago
  There's a thread regarding this on github linked from gorhill's repo: https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158 Also Adguard for Safari is GPL v3. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardForSafari
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  You don't need to trust Safari content blockers because they can't access anything, they can just create static blocker rules. That's one of the key points of the system.
newscracker 6y ago
Safari supports content blockers, which are basically lists of content to block. AFAIK, there's also a limit (50K, IIRC?) to the number of rules that can be bundled within one extension. With the popular lists used with an extension like uBlock Origin, 50K is quite a small number. So multiple extensions would be required to get close to uBlock Origin, even if we dismiss element blocking rules and other features that uBlock Origin offers.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I don't see any ads on Safari in macOS or iOS due to Firefox Focus and Wipr content blockers.

newscracker 6y ago

What you say is true to an extent. If you do not need the full power of uBlock Origin, may I suggest using NextDNS.io with added blocking filters (many popular filter lists are available there)? The other option would be a Pi-Hole. To reiterate, these are not full replacements for uBlock Origin, but they do help even when using uBlock Origin with a browser like Firefox.