13 ms·

µBlock for Firefox

707 points by aerique 12y ago

commentereleven 12y ago
They claim that when the extension gets added to addons.mozilla.org, it would start to auto-update.
- ecaron 12y ago
  Auto-updating is possible even without using addons.mozilla.org, sites like Pinterest do it all the time for their plugin. Mozilla rolls that option into their CFX builder - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cfx_xpi https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cf... - the update file just needs a consistent place to live. I use CloudFront for it.
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Unfortunately I doubt the auto-updates will work when the add-on's .xpi URL is not stable because it includes uBlock version number. He might be able to workaround that limitation by hosting a stable .xpi URL on a github.io website. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/uBlock.firefox.xpi https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/...
interesting_guy 12y ago
finally
louhike 12y ago
I haven't been able to do performance tests, which is supposed to be the best advantage of this extension. But at least, it seems to block ads properly on Chrome. Has anybody made some tests outside of the developers of the extension?
whizzkid 12y ago
I have been using µBlock for 3 weeks now.(previously adblock plus). There is one irritating thing it has that almost makes me go back to adblock again. It is often blocking the false positives. So if developer has named one of their assets file with social media names like "twitter/facebook/etc", it blocks the file right away. Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site, you can either disable µBlock or go with the crashed site. Not all the sites are written professionally by experts, and this becomes an issue when you are trying to purchase stuff from small online shops. (to support local sellers) I am too busy for a pull request these days, but maybe this will be fixed soon by someone else. My point for µBlock is for now 5/10.
- logn 12y ago
  You should file an issue on github at least. The developer is responsive and friendly.
- joshschreuder 12y ago
  That's an issue with the filter lists you choose, not uBlock. Also uBlock does allow you to disable on a domain or subdomain, so this is easily worked around. uBlock is a bit more of a power user blocker than AdBlock and its variants, but I find it to be far better, both in customisability of filters, and resource utilisation.
- simi_ 12y ago
  I thought this was one of those "used it for <x> <y>s and everything is super duper" and wanted to add my "+1". Anyway, I've been using it for 1-2 months and it's been smooth sailing so far. Faster than AdBlock and 99.9% of the coverage coverage (usually some obscure popup ads usually – they did get fixed pretty fast though). And no false positives for me at all.
- rplnt 12y ago
  > Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site What's the purpose of such tool really? It might sound weird, but I was happiest with opt-in (ad) blocking. Every single blocked content was (semi)manually entered by me. I really don't care if I see ads on a site I visit once in a lifetime.
- aen0 12y ago
  You can fined tune (almost like uMatrix) the blocking in the latest version by enabling "Advanced user feature".
- aleem 12y ago
  Similarly, it blocks all FB, Twitter buttons across all websites and there seems to be no way to white list those across all websites. Am I missing something?
  - gnud 12y ago
misterdai 12y ago
The GitHub site also states that it's available for Chrome, Opera and Safari (not yet in the extension gallery). Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamej... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ublock/ https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ublock/ Safari: https://chrismatic.io/ublock https://chrismatic.io/ublock Haven't tried it out myself yet but it's nice to see effort put into lowering the memory & CPU usage of such blockers.
- Logmix 12y ago
  Thanks for those links. While the earlier versions for Safari (like v0.8.2.0, found here https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117) work well on Safari 5, these new versions on your Safari link do not. They crash the browser during installation.
  - anon1385 12y ago
    Seems to be this issue: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547
  - wooger 12y ago
    Safari is on version 7, why would you care about v5?
- provemewrong 12y ago
  Yeah, I've used it on Chrome for half a year now. The news is that it's now available for Firefox.
neuronic 12y ago
From my experience of using this for a few weeks now on Chrome, I would recommend this over AdBlock Plus etc. I haven't done any specific performance tests and personally no numbers to back it up. However, I do have the subjective impression of improvement. I'm using it in combination with µMatrix.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  > I'm using it in combination with µMatrix. I'm curious: how do you use it? Do you have to mass-enable stuff using the 'power' icon, for many sites? Or do you just enable the things you know you need, on a per-site basis? Or are your default just good enough? The reason I ask is that I was curious about it, so tried it out for a couple of days. I found many sites were not usable with the default settings, e.g. Udemy's login box didn't show up until I turned off µMatrix.
  - mziulu 12y ago
    I haven't used uMatrix, since I use Firefox, but I can speak for RequestPolicy, which is kind of the same thing basically AFAICS. It's very very very rare that I end up whitelisting everything that's requested on a site. The more you use the extension, the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended, and this way you end up building your own whitelist: allowing requests from a domain is a one-time only thing most of the times (additionally, there's an extension you can install that syncs your whitelist to your Firefox Sync account).
    - the8472 12y ago
      > the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended Sites using cloudflare are a major issue here, specifically their cryptic subdomains. If someone were to hide an ad network behind those they would be hard to tell apart from the rest, at least for humans.
      - mziulu 12y ago
ramadarata 12y ago
Ad blocking is theft. Period.
- rplnt 12y ago
  I wonder if sites could make it so with EULA or something. Could they say that viewing an article without ads violates something? Or using this service (for example reddit) without ads? Is it legally possible?
  - ps4fanboy 12y ago
    EULA's dont usually hold up in court because contracts normally require consideration, most of the time you cant implicitly enter into a contract.
    - cryofan 12y ago
      um...wrong
    - chii 12y ago
      the consideration is the content of the website. EULA haven't been tested in court, sure, but i think against the average person, they won't be able to do battle against a large corporation should they decide to enforce it.
      - ps4fanboy 12y ago
        What is the consideration of the user? Contract Consideration - Something of value given by both parties to a contract that induces them to enter into the agreement to exchange mutual performances.
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  That would be like saying a service that blacked out the ads in news papers is theft, its completely rubbish. Plus educate yourself on the definition of theft: "theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it." At best its unauthorized modification of a creative work without distributing it, which is not illegal and never will be.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
barrkel 12y ago
Hopefully at some point someone will do something similar for element-level blocking. A lot of my custom ABP rules are actually blocking dynamic HTML slide-ins, overlays, animated carousels, etc.
- anon4 12y ago
  If you just want to remove elements from the page, rather than block connections to third-party servers, I recommend Stylish. You can just write custom CSS rules and make those elements display:none. Alternatively, write a user script that does the same.
  - loosescrews 12y ago
    ABP prevents unwanted crap from being downloaded.
- nexxer 12y ago
  Remove it Permanently does this, adding a submenu to right-click: http://rip.mozdev.org/ http://rip.mozdev.org/
- jon-wood 12y ago
  uBlock supports this - you can right click on any element and select "Block element", which then pops up an editor allowing you to refine the CSS selector to only get the bit you want removed.
- nathan_long 12y ago
  AdBlock (getadblock.com), competitor to Adblock Plus, has a wizard for blocking elements. Right click on the page, AdBlock -> Block This Ad -> adjust the slider for element-level specificity. That creates a custom filter that you can go edit if you want.
molticrystal 12y ago
How is the performance for the firefox port? I might of missed it, but all I see are reports in comparison to adblockers on chrome.
- msl09 12y ago
  https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benchmarking-memory-footprint-of-the-early-preview https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc...
  - zobzu 12y ago
    Wah Chromium uses way more ram than Firefox. 425M (firefox+ublock) vs 1.04G (chromium+ublock) in all cases memory is reduced :)
    - gorhill 12y ago
      I did warn on that page: > You can't compare directly the figures between the browsers Still, yes, Chromium uses more memory. A good part of this is because per-process tab. Once Firefox get the same per-process tab architecture, it will be easier to compare both browsers together.
      - wooger 12y ago
        Yep, Chrome / Chromium are now the #1 reason to bump my ram to 16GB. While using a laptop for coding / VMs etc. I still find my browser eating more ram most of the time - it simply doesn't handle paging out gracefully, and is horrific for my uses with < 4GB ram on any OS.
      - zobzu 12y ago
        well, firefox seems set to use a process for UI and a process for all tabs (such as in nightly right now), the consumption is still far lower.
  - exprL 12y ago
    I'd appreciate details of CPU consumption as well. Minute amounts of memory are of no concern for many people, but everyone prefers snappier browsing, every time.
aerique 12y ago
It isn't quite clear to me what add-ons this can replace. Obviously AdBlock, but perhaps also Ghostery and No-Script?
- logn 12y ago
  It's a replacement for AdBlock. JavaScript is not blocked unless it's part of an ad. The Easy Privacy list is part of uBlock by default, so there's some effective overlap with Ghostery but they're still different.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    You can control javascript execution when enabling "advanced user" mode: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...
- rmi_ 12y ago
  There are lists available that block the same things as Ghostery. So yes, it does replace that. Not NoScript, though.
  - bmn_ 12y ago
    comparison charts between HTTPSB (the predecessor of this topic's software) and Ghostery, inter alia: https://gigaom.com/2014/05/11/not-all-ad-blockers-are-the-same-heres-why-the-effs-privacy-badger-is-different/ https://gigaom.com/2014/05/11/not-all-ad-blockers-are-the-sa...
- waxjar 12y ago
  µBlock does have an option to disable "first-party" and "third-party" scripts. It's configurable globally and per-site (per-site takes precedence). I don't think it blocks Flash. I let the browser to that anyway, so for me this isn't a problem.
hit8run 12y ago
Under OS X I like https://glimmerblocker.org/ https://glimmerblocker.org/ Glimmerblocker works on operating system level and you don't really need an adblocker in your browser.
jkot 12y ago
Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.
- __Joker 12y ago
  Where do you get the filter list to modify /etc/host ? Or Is there a easier way to get the filter list from ABP or mu-block ?
  - Dosenpfand 12y ago
    I use this list and it works quite well: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
  - mih 12y ago
    Quite a few sources actually. Beware, some of them can be too restrictive. If the hosts file is too big, it can also impact performance. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip (too restrictive) http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip (ad-servers n tracking only) http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showi... http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt
    - edwintorok 12y ago
      http://adaway.org/hosts.txt http://adaway.org/hosts.txt I also replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 and duplicate each entry to have it for IPV6 as well, as in this script except I don't do the iptables rules: https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752 https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752
    - chippy 12y ago
      curious about the performance issue. Would the impact on performance be larger than a similarly sized block list in a browser plugin? I have a netbook, so always want to keep an eye out on performance. I wonder if there's a GUI application which enables these hosts sources to be tweaked, searched, whitelisted etc
mwj 12y ago
How does this compare/contrast with Privacy Badger?
- Anthony-G 12y ago
  Good question. It's a pity that the only response was a flag-killed irrelevancy. Only last week, I downloaded and started using Privacy Badger as an alternative to Ghostery. I'm liking it so far but my current laptop is 7 years old and only has 1GB RAM (running LXDE) so resource consumption is my main concern after safe-guarding my privacy.
- cgarvis 12y ago
  I've been using Privacy Badger for atleast 6 months now. I really like it. I've opened a ticket on github asking for a comparison. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/554 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/554
bad_user 12y ago
Does this also work for Firefox on Android? EDIT: it seems that it's not compatible with Firefox 35 on my Android. Oh well, more patience required :-)
- threedaymonk 12y ago
  Bluhell Firewall does work on Firefox for Android, if you're looking for an ad blocker while you wait for µBlock.
  - notfoss 12y ago
    And so do Adblock Plus and Adblock Edge. The reason I am interested in this is because of much lower resource consumption than either of those. I haven't tried Bluehell Firewall though. Can you comment on its performance as compared to Adblock Plus/Edge?
    - threedaymonk 12y ago
      Bluhell is touted as a lighter weight solution. I haven't taken measurements, but Firefox Mobile certainly feels snappier with Bluhell than with Adblock Plus/Edge.
      - notfoss 12y ago
        Thanks, I'll give it a try.
  - silverwind 12y ago
    For system level blocking on Android, I've come to like AdAway (root required).
omegote 12y ago
With the linked tweet to that retarded definition of theft (https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632 https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632), Lea Verou has definitely become the Anita Sarkeesian of web development. She's gone full retard.
fpgaminer 12y ago
It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is an ad or not. That thwarts URI based filtering. To thwart DOM filtering, randomize element classes and ids. Though impractical, I thought it was an evil/funny idea.
- Drakim 12y ago
  If the resource names are still "static" your resources can still be blocked. But if they are altered slightly every time, you may also thwart caching, right?
  - fpgaminer 12y ago
    Right, which is why I added the bit about salting the URIs before encryption. The salt could be per request, per session, or rotated after some period of time (say once per day). If only rotated once per day, it would still thwart ad blocking, but have less of an impact on caching. It would turn into an economic question of whether the extra ad impressions are worth the extra bandwidth.
    - wampus 12y ago
      Since most ads are effectively blocked at the domain level, I doubt your scheme would provide much bang for the buck.
      - fpgaminer 12y ago
        The idea is that the ads would be served from the original host. Combined with encrypted URIs and the ad resources become indistinguishable from content resources. Thus thwarting blocking. As others have pointed out, yes this evil trick is incompatible with existing ad networks (which use their own domains). But it wasn't my intention to put forward a viable idea. Just an interesting one (namely, ciphering URIs to prevent blocking).
Direct 12y ago
This is awesome! I recently read this ticket[1] mentioning that porting of µBlock seems to be a starting point for gorhill to port µMatrix. In my perfect world, I would be using Firefox with nothing but µMatrix, as it is right now I'm having to use Chrome with µMatrix and sadly can't get rid of µBlock until µMatrix can hide blocked frames. Still, getting closer to that perfect world! The work done by gorhill is amazing. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73 https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73
- mcovey 12y ago
  Check out Policeman: https://github.com/futpib/policeman https://github.com/futpib/policeman It's similar to uMatrix and is under very active development.
topdownjimmy 12y ago
> ...the inalienable right to privacy. Yes, you have a right not to visit any website you don't want to.
- perlgeek 12y ago
  If all websites declared all privacy violations up-front, that might be a viable solution.
  - topdownjimmy 12y ago
    Turn off cookies and JavaScript.
    - TheCraiggers 12y ago
      >Turn off cookies and JavaScript. In your first comment, you seemed to be against altering the presentation of websites; you offer a binary choice: go to the site, or do not, based solely on the content. Seemingly advocating that sites should be accepted or rejected whole-cloth with no modification. Yet here, you seem to be just fine with blocking Javascript and cookies, despite the fact that both these technologies are often used as part of ad services to generate revenue. So which is it?
      - topdownjimmy 12y ago
        I'm not against altering the presentation of websites at all; I use Ghostery myself (plus Greasemonkey etc.). I just think it's dishonest to pretend that this has anything to do with rights violations.
    - debacle 12y ago
      No, silly, they want all of the content and functionality that they developers worked so hard for, they just don't want the developers to be compensated for it.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
If the author is here, please turn off the counter by default. We're blocking distracting things in our browser, we don't need another pointless distracting thing in our browser toolbar.
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  Counter opinion: I like the number because if there's a website working not quite right, I can easily see the number and disable uBlock to test out if that's the cause.
  - DavideNL 12y ago
    Seems already configurable: -> Settings -> Show the number of blocked requests on the icon
  - JohnTHaller 12y ago
    But you can't, though. uBlock shows the total number of blocked items since you started Firefox. Not the number for a given page or site. Making it a basically superfluous mostly useless datapoint.
    - JeremyNT 12y ago
      This is not the behavior I observe; in my case, it shows only the number blocked on the current page. Perhaps you have encountered a bug?
      - JohnTHaller 12y ago
        After turning it off and turning it back on, it's now per-page. Odd. Still, annoying and pointless for my purposes.
    - eyko 12y ago
      On Safari and Chrome, it displays the number of filters applied on the current site. This is (super) useful. If on Firefox you're getting a global count then that's a bug (so please report it on Github). Perhaps changing the color from red to something more "off" (grey?) would help distract less.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
simon_vetter 12y ago
is this on addons.mozilla.org? I couldn't find it there.
sjwright 12y ago
Amazing work. One concern is that the EasyPrivacy‎ list -- which is in my opinion overly aggressive -- is enabled by default. Most pertinently, it entirely disables Google Analytics on every site.
- Rovanion 12y ago
  Does the deactivation of Google Analytics impact the user negatively?
  - coldpie 12y ago
    Arguably the sites they visit will be receiving skewed analytics against their particular use-case, so the site owners won't cater to their needs as much. That said, I still block GA.
  - oconnore 12y ago
    They don't get the privilege of having their data analyzed and used to market products back to them. Some of the marketing people on here will probably find that to be horrendous. Where is my relevant promoted content?!
    - sjwright 12y ago
      If most geeks end up blocking GA (in most cases without realising it) then the audience of geek-focused content might end up being severely under-reported to publishers. This will only accelerate the mainstreamification of our culture.
      - oconnore 12y ago
        You ought to be supporting publishers that are important to you with your dollars, not with HTTP requests to Google Analytics.
      - quadrangle 12y ago
        You're right. We should all start reading all our spam messages and actively buying all the products we can tolerate. Otherwise, the spam will only be for crap we don't like…
danielsamuels 12y ago
I tried this out for a couple of weeks after the "Adblock makes things slower" article came out, and I found it was blocking more stuff - but not necessarily the right stuff. I was finding that sites were breaking, stuff was disappearing and it was because of uBlock. I think I was trying to log into Medium and the Twitter and Facebook had been hidden, literally breaking the functionality of the site. That's not what I want from an adblocker.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  There's already a couple of threads here discussing that uBlock is using different filters by default than other adblockers. There's also a comment from the developer mentioning that the filter you mention has been turned off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916774 ). Here's a good guideline: uBlock is not yet the right blocker for people that don't want to configure anything. It's not clear to me that it is even trying to be that thing, but it's clear enough that it isn't there yet.
- meowface 12y ago
  This happened to me as well, but for different sites. In the end I just had to whitelist 2 domains and I haven't run ino a problem since.
- losvedir 12y ago
  Well, as the README says, it's not an "adblocker" but a generic blocker. Hiding Twitter and Facebook log-in functionality on Medium is a feature not a bug for me. By including those javascripts, both companies can build up a history of the sites I visit. So I gather this is more of a privacy+ad blocker rather than strictly ad blocker.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    Unfortunately, even with EasyPrivacy and "Fanboy's Social Blocking", you will find that blockers (ABP, AdBlock, uBlock, etc) do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot.[1] This is one of the reasons I see dynamic filtering as a key feature: users have the last word, not the filter lists.[2] For example, I currently block all Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, and any of similarly ubiquitous domains by default using dynamic filtering, so that I have now 100% certainty that no connections to these domains occur on any page, while such certainty is not possible when relying solely on the filter lists. [1] https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...
deleted 12y ago
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danieltoomey 12y ago
My version of firefox (34.05 on mac) says the tool is corrupted
- titolibowitz 12y ago
  try installing it from here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases worked for me.
codychan 12y ago
I tried this for Chrome for a couple days and found that it really didn't block too much ads(I can say none ads were blocked) comparing to ABP.
teamhappy 12y ago
Does anybody know if I really need the "Malware domain list" if I have Chrome's malware and phishing protection activated at the same time? Sounds like they might contain the same sites anyway.
ecaron 12y ago
Personally, I hope that this doesn't get added to addons.mozilla.org. Their arbitrary human-control editor policy would be the best thing to cause stagnation of innovative plugins such as this. If the author goes the self-hosted route, automatic updates are still achievable (and can even occur faster.) +1 for not having this in AMO!
hurin 12y ago
I'm curious as to what drives the creation of this multitude of add-blocking projects? What is their income model and what supports their development?
- beagle3 12y ago
  The obnoxious and spying nature of ads.
  - hurin 12y ago
    ... I'm not asking about why you'd want one. - I'm asking about why you'd make a new one and who would pay for your work on a new one when others already exist?
    - Kliment 12y ago
      Own itch-scratching I guess.
    - beagle3 12y ago
      But that is the same question. Not everyone is trying to maximize their wealth all the time. Do you ask "why did Linus write Linux when there were other operating systems available at the time and no one was paying him for it?" or similarly the Atheos.cx guy? Gnome when there was KDE? Gimp when there was Photoshop? Facebook when there was MySpace?
      - quadrangle 12y ago
        The last one isn't comparable to the others. The original Facebook made by that other guy Aaron Greenspan arguably was just someone doing something because it was useful. Zuckerberg and co. made what is today's Facebook specifically to gain profit and power. But your point is well-made otherwise. The answer to "why?" for uBlock and others is "because people care enough to do it."
mdellabitta 12y ago
I decided to dump extension-based privacy stuff and installed Privoxy instead. I used to have Ghostery, Disconnect, ABP, and some other things running simultaneously. When you think about it, that's a lot of JS running and iterating the DOM multiple times every time you load a page. Now there's a single, purpose-built, standalone process written in C doing it. Not going back.
- notsony 12y ago
  Any issues connecting to sites over SSL using Privoxy? I'm thinking mainly of banking web-sites.
  - Nanzikambe 12y ago
    I've used Privoxy since late 2002 on a Linux gateway box - never had a single issue with SSL. In fact the only issue I've ever had was building it an forgetting to enable threaded mode ..
  - mdellabitta 12y ago
    I don't recall any problems, but I use Foxyproxy to connect to it. In the worst case, you can just toggle it off quickly for that site, then turn it on again.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- aerique 12y ago
  I used to run Privoxy for years and then came the time of AdBlock, NoScript, etc. Perhaps it is indeed time to look back again.
- sdfjkl 12y ago
  I've used Privoxy & friends (Glitterblocker on OS X) since the days of junkbusters.com, but with SSL on the rise this no longer works very well for me.
  - 12y ago
HeXetic 12y ago
It would be nice if the link was to the top of the page, or the start of the Readme, instead of to #installation. A bit presumptuous there.
webwanderings 12y ago
Please get us uBlock for Chrome on Android and iOS.
- Perceval 12y ago
  I use Weblock on iOS: http://www.weblockapp.com/ http://www.weblockapp.com/
- austinsharp 12y ago
  I'd recommend Javelin Browser[0] on Android. [0] http://javelinbrowser.com/ http://javelinbrowser.com/
chdir 12y ago
Can someone familiar with the code explain what's the difference between this & adblock/disconnect etc. Why is this lighter? (a little technical algorithm difference would be good to know)
- edwintorok 12y ago
  I think uBlock only injects the CSS rules needed, not 14000+ like ABP: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52638574 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52...
leke 12y ago
This came just in time. My Firefox was crawling with ABP. Now it's flying along again.
unethical_ban 12y ago
I like it, but so far anyway, I'm not feeling discernible differences in performance. That's just me though! I would like to see something akin to Ghostery's interface where I can see exactly what trackers/ads are hitting me at a site, and whitelist by domain.
lars_francke 12y ago
I've never had an (Ad) blocker as I'm relatively happy with most sites but there are some that are not behaving well. When I last looked (at least two years ago) there wasn't a single blocker that supports a blacklist-only mode. Meaning: Allow everything unless I block a certain domain. Does anyone have an idea if something like this exists now?
- exadeci 12y ago
  Well if you disable all the filters of Ublock and add your block list to the "My filters" tab that should do what you want :)
  - lars_francke 12y ago
    Thanks but that's not what I'm looking for. I don't want to maintain any block lists myself. I want to use all the 3rd-party Filters available but I only want them to be active on certain spammy websites. As far as I can tell ublock doesn't let me do that either.
- Tobu 12y ago
  Just don't enable any filter lists. A while back you had to add them manually; now I think it's a matter of unchecking them in the first-run dialog. ABP also makes it easy to create very specific rules: only block a particular resource when accessed from the current domain.
  - lars_francke 12y ago
    Thanks but that's not what I'm looking for. I want them all enabled! But I only want to enable the addon for certain blacklisted sites.
G2P 12y ago
I've been using this port instead of Adblock Plus for a few weeks. I like the low overhead, but usability is bad. - It's hard to list what filters are applied (though not impossible, if you like pain: hunt for the right icon using hovertext, find an empty page, hunt for icons again this time without hovertext; one icon will trigger something that will fill up a log, but it stalls a few seconds first and there's no progress indication). - The big green “power” icon is the wrong metaphor. IMHO uBlock should just stop using icons. - ABP has simple and obvious text menus, uBlock fails at making its features discoverable. This despite ABP being much more feature-complete. - There's no way to enable and disable filters from a page. - There's no easy way to reach uBlock preferences (though not impossible, if you click random areas of the main panel) - There's no rule editor. ABP's rule editor makes the simple cases easy and the tricky ones possible. - The element hiding picker is unusable. The ABP picker is well polished, but ABP also integrates with the Firefox developer tools. That simple feature makes it unnecessary to code a custom picker.
- INTPenis 12y ago
  I hear what you're saying but to me the advantage of ABP has been never having to see its preferences. I've used it for many years and I can't remember ever going into the preferences for any reason. I've said this before but being a habitual user of noscript I feel that all I really need from an adblocker is to skip those annoying youtube commercials. Everything else noscript handles pretty well. So I'll have to see if uBlock can do that for me.
  - wernercd 12y ago
    You need to atleast go into the preferences to select extra lists (if you want them) and to disable whitelisted sites (also, if you want to do that since ABP enables "some" ads by default). (I'd probably enable the whitelisted stuff... IF I wasn't more concerned about adware than anything else over ad-networks)
findjashua 12y ago
ublock doesn't work on quite a few sites, whereas I've never had an issue with adblock. Couple of examples off the top of my head: 1. giphy: it removes the share and twitter buttons 2. doesn't block ads on hulu There were others as well that I seem to be forgetting (I remember having to disable it on quite a few sites). Good intention (lowering memory consumption), but the execution still has some way to go.
- sprokolopolis 12y ago
  Some of those share/tweet/like buttons can track you without no interaction, just by loading on the page. Removing them might be intentional for this reason.
  - findjashua 12y ago
    True, but imho an ad blocker should just block ads by default. I'm not sure if I'm representative of most users, but I don't really care as much about tracking, just about ads cluttering the page.
    - gorhill 12y ago
      > an ad blocker should just block ads by default First sentence on the project page: "µBlock is not an ad blocker; it's a general-purpose blocker."
      - findjashua 12y ago
        touche!
- quadrangle 12y ago
  this is just different filter presets. You can change the filters. In my case, I had ABP doing all that same blocking, only I had to opt-in, whereas with ublock that blocking is opt-out.
  - 12y ago
pwr22 12y ago
Is this considered stable now? Last I checked it had some problems, if fixed already that is awesome
bsder 12y ago
Does this work on any of the mobile browsers? I'd kill for something to block stuff properly on mobile.
- dpifke 12y ago
  I just tried and was unsuccessful at installing it on Firefox for Android. (Fails to install silently after download.) That said, Ghostery (and for that matter, HTTPS Everywhere) both work great.
tux 12y ago
Awesome exactly what I was looking for. Because AdBlock Plus is extremely slow at times. Also uBlock provides many more filters. Thank You!
- dserodio 12y ago
  The official XPI are here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
  - tux 12y ago
    Thanks :-) Will check it out.
tux 12y ago
Installed it in Firefox 35 and Chromium 39 on Arch Linux, now browsing is noticeably faster :-) Whooohooo!
gorhill 12y ago
Well while this is being seen by many, I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate what is said in the README of the project: > Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free. Specifically, EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy Social, Malware domains, and a many more are the basis of many other blockers: Adblock Plus, AdBlock, AdGuard, BlueHell, and many others I am sure. It seems such a tedious amount of work to maintain these lists, this needs to be acknowledged -- none of the above blockers would do very well without these lists.

µBlock for Firefox

707 points by aerique 12y ago

commentereleven 12y ago

They claim that when the extension gets added to addons.mozilla.org, it would start to auto-update.

ecaron 12y ago
Auto-updating is possible even without using addons.mozilla.org, sites like Pinterest do it all the time for their plugin. Mozilla rolls that option into their CFX builder - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cfx_xpi https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/SDK/Tools/cfx#cf... - the update file just needs a consistent place to live. I use CloudFront for it.
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Unfortunately I doubt the auto-updates will work when the add-on's .xpi URL is not stable because it includes uBlock version number. He might be able to workaround that limitation by hosting a stable .xpi URL on a github.io website. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/uBlock.firefox.xpi https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/download/0.8.5.7/...

interesting_guy 12y ago

finally

louhike 12y ago

I haven't been able to do performance tests, which is supposed to be the best advantage of this extension. But at least, it seems to block ads properly on Chrome. Has anybody made some tests outside of the developers of the extension?

whizzkid 12y ago

I have been using µBlock for 3 weeks now.(previously adblock plus). There is one irritating thing it has that almost makes me go back to adblock again. It is often blocking the false positives. So if developer has named one of their assets file with social media names like "twitter/facebook/etc", it blocks the file right away. Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site, you can either disable µBlock or go with the crashed site. Not all the sites are written professionally by experts, and this becomes an issue when you are trying to purchase stuff from small online shops. (to support local sellers) I am too busy for a pull request these days, but maybe this will be fixed soon by someone else. My point for µBlock is for now 5/10.

logn 12y ago
You should file an issue on github at least. The developer is responsive and friendly.
joshschreuder 12y ago
That's an issue with the filter lists you choose, not uBlock. Also uBlock does allow you to disable on a domain or subdomain, so this is easily worked around. uBlock is a bit more of a power user blocker than AdBlock and its variants, but I find it to be far better, both in customisability of filters, and resource utilisation.
simi_ 12y ago
I thought this was one of those "used it for <x> <y>s and everything is super duper" and wanted to add my "+1". Anyway, I've been using it for 1-2 months and it's been smooth sailing so far. Faster than AdBlock and 99.9% of the coverage coverage (usually some obscure popup ads usually – they did get fixed pretty fast though). And no false positives for me at all.
rplnt 12y ago
> Since it does not have custom configuration options for each site What's the purpose of such tool really? It might sound weird, but I was happiest with opt-in (ad) blocking. Every single blocked content was (semi)manually entered by me. I really don't care if I see ads on a site I visit once in a lifetime.
aen0 12y ago
You can fined tune (almost like uMatrix) the blocking in the latest version by enabling "Advanced user feature".
aleem 12y ago
Similarly, it blocks all FB, Twitter buttons across all websites and there seems to be no way to white list those across all websites. Am I missing something?
- gnud 12y ago

misterdai 12y ago

The GitHub site also states that it's available for Chrome, Opera and Safari (not yet in the extension gallery). Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cjpalhdlnbpafiamej... Opera: https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ublock/ https://addons.opera.com/en-gb/extensions/details/ublock/ Safari: https://chrismatic.io/ublock https://chrismatic.io/ublock Haven't tried it out myself yet but it's nice to see effort put into lowering the memory & CPU usage of such blockers.

Logmix 12y ago
Thanks for those links. While the earlier versions for Safari (like v0.8.2.0, found here https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/117) work well on Safari 5, these new versions on your Safari link do not. They crash the browser during installation.
- anon1385 12y ago
  Seems to be this issue: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/547
- wooger 12y ago
  Safari is on version 7, why would you care about v5?
provemewrong 12y ago
Yeah, I've used it on Chrome for half a year now. The news is that it's now available for Firefox.

neuronic 12y ago

From my experience of using this for a few weeks now on Chrome, I would recommend this over AdBlock Plus etc. I haven't done any specific performance tests and personally no numbers to back it up. However, I do have the subjective impression of improvement. I'm using it in combination with µMatrix.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
> I'm using it in combination with µMatrix. I'm curious: how do you use it? Do you have to mass-enable stuff using the 'power' icon, for many sites? Or do you just enable the things you know you need, on a per-site basis? Or are your default just good enough? The reason I ask is that I was curious about it, so tried it out for a couple of days. I found many sites were not usable with the default settings, e.g. Udemy's login box didn't show up until I turned off µMatrix.
- mziulu 12y ago
  I haven't used uMatrix, since I use Firefox, but I can speak for RequestPolicy, which is kind of the same thing basically AFAICS. It's very very very rare that I end up whitelisting everything that's requested on a site. The more you use the extension, the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended, and this way you end up building your own whitelist: allowing requests from a domain is a one-time only thing most of the times (additionally, there's an extension you can install that syncs your whitelist to your Firefox Sync account).
  - the8472 12y ago
    > the more you learn to recognize what domains you need to allow in order to have the site working as intended Sites using cloudflare are a major issue here, specifically their cryptic subdomains. If someone were to hide an ad network behind those they would be hard to tell apart from the rest, at least for humans.
    - mziulu 12y ago

ramadarata 12y ago

Ad blocking is theft. Period.

rplnt 12y ago
I wonder if sites could make it so with EULA or something. Could they say that viewing an article without ads violates something? Or using this service (for example reddit) without ads? Is it legally possible?
- ps4fanboy 12y ago
  EULA's dont usually hold up in court because contracts normally require consideration, most of the time you cant implicitly enter into a contract.
  - cryofan 12y ago
    um...wrong
  - chii 12y ago
    the consideration is the content of the website. EULA haven't been tested in court, sure, but i think against the average person, they won't be able to do battle against a large corporation should they decide to enforce it.
    - ps4fanboy 12y ago
      What is the consideration of the user? Contract Consideration - Something of value given by both parties to a contract that induces them to enter into the agreement to exchange mutual performances.
ps4fanboy 12y ago
That would be like saying a service that blacked out the ads in news papers is theft, its completely rubbish. Plus educate yourself on the definition of theft: "theft is the taking of another person's property without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it." At best its unauthorized modification of a creative work without distributing it, which is not illegal and never will be.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

barrkel 12y ago

Hopefully at some point someone will do something similar for element-level blocking. A lot of my custom ABP rules are actually blocking dynamic HTML slide-ins, overlays, animated carousels, etc.

anon4 12y ago
If you just want to remove elements from the page, rather than block connections to third-party servers, I recommend Stylish. You can just write custom CSS rules and make those elements display:none. Alternatively, write a user script that does the same.
- loosescrews 12y ago
  ABP prevents unwanted crap from being downloaded.
nexxer 12y ago
Remove it Permanently does this, adding a submenu to right-click: http://rip.mozdev.org/ http://rip.mozdev.org/
jon-wood 12y ago
uBlock supports this - you can right click on any element and select "Block element", which then pops up an editor allowing you to refine the CSS selector to only get the bit you want removed.
nathan_long 12y ago
AdBlock (getadblock.com), competitor to Adblock Plus, has a wizard for blocking elements. Right click on the page, AdBlock -> Block This Ad -> adjust the slider for element-level specificity. That creates a custom filter that you can go edit if you want.

molticrystal 12y ago

How is the performance for the firefox port? I might of missed it, but all I see are reports in comparison to adblockers on chrome.

msl09 12y ago
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benchmarking-memory-footprint-of-the-early-preview https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc...
- zobzu 12y ago
  Wah Chromium uses way more ram than Firefox. 425M (firefox+ublock) vs 1.04G (chromium+ublock) in all cases memory is reduced :)
  - gorhill 12y ago
    I did warn on that page: > You can't compare directly the figures between the browsers Still, yes, Chromium uses more memory. A good part of this is because per-process tab. Once Firefox get the same per-process tab architecture, it will be easier to compare both browsers together.
    - wooger 12y ago
      Yep, Chrome / Chromium are now the #1 reason to bump my ram to 16GB. While using a laptop for coding / VMs etc. I still find my browser eating more ram most of the time - it simply doesn't handle paging out gracefully, and is horrific for my uses with < 4GB ram on any OS.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      well, firefox seems set to use a process for UI and a process for all tabs (such as in nightly right now), the consumption is still far lower.
- exprL 12y ago
  I'd appreciate details of CPU consumption as well. Minute amounts of memory are of no concern for many people, but everyone prefers snappier browsing, every time.

aerique 12y ago

It isn't quite clear to me what add-ons this can replace. Obviously AdBlock, but perhaps also Ghostery and No-Script?

logn 12y ago
It's a replacement for AdBlock. JavaScript is not blocked unless it's part of an ad. The Easy Privacy list is part of uBlock by default, so there's some effective overlap with Ghostery but they're still different.
- gorhill 12y ago
  You can control javascript execution when enabling "advanced user" mode: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...
rmi_ 12y ago
There are lists available that block the same things as Ghostery. So yes, it does replace that. Not NoScript, though.
- bmn_ 12y ago
  comparison charts between HTTPSB (the predecessor of this topic's software) and Ghostery, inter alia: https://gigaom.com/2014/05/11/not-all-ad-blockers-are-the-same-heres-why-the-effs-privacy-badger-is-different/ https://gigaom.com/2014/05/11/not-all-ad-blockers-are-the-sa...
waxjar 12y ago
µBlock does have an option to disable "first-party" and "third-party" scripts. It's configurable globally and per-site (per-site takes precedence). I don't think it blocks Flash. I let the browser to that anyway, so for me this isn't a problem.

hit8run 12y ago

Under OS X I like https://glimmerblocker.org/ https://glimmerblocker.org/ Glimmerblocker works on operating system level and you don't really need an adblocker in your browser.

jkot 12y ago

Use /etc/hosts blocking if you are worried about CPU and memory. It also works on rooted Android devices.

__Joker 12y ago
Where do you get the filter list to modify /etc/host ? Or Is there a easier way to get the filter list from ABP or mu-block ?
- Dosenpfand 12y ago
  I use this list and it works quite well: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
- mih 12y ago
  Quite a few sources actually. Beware, some of them can be too restrictive. If the hosts file is too big, it can also impact performance. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.zip (too restrictive) http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip http://hosts-file.net/download/hosts.zip (ad-servers n tracking only) http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=1&mimetype=plaintext http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showi... http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts.win http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt
  - edwintorok 12y ago
    http://adaway.org/hosts.txt http://adaway.org/hosts.txt I also replace 127.0.0.1 with 0.0.0.0 and duplicate each entry to have it for IPV6 as well, as in this script except I don't do the iptables rules: https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752 https://gist.github.com/teffalump/7227752
  - chippy 12y ago
    curious about the performance issue. Would the impact on performance be larger than a similarly sized block list in a browser plugin? I have a netbook, so always want to keep an eye out on performance. I wonder if there's a GUI application which enables these hosts sources to be tweaked, searched, whitelisted etc

mwj 12y ago

How does this compare/contrast with Privacy Badger?

Anthony-G 12y ago
Good question. It's a pity that the only response was a flag-killed irrelevancy. Only last week, I downloaded and started using Privacy Badger as an alternative to Ghostery. I'm liking it so far but my current laptop is 7 years old and only has 1GB RAM (running LXDE) so resource consumption is my main concern after safe-guarding my privacy.
cgarvis 12y ago
I've been using Privacy Badger for atleast 6 months now. I really like it. I've opened a ticket on github asking for a comparison. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/554 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/554

bad_user 12y ago

Does this also work for Firefox on Android? EDIT: it seems that it's not compatible with Firefox 35 on my Android. Oh well, more patience required :-)

threedaymonk 12y ago
Bluhell Firewall does work on Firefox for Android, if you're looking for an ad blocker while you wait for µBlock.
- notfoss 12y ago
  And so do Adblock Plus and Adblock Edge. The reason I am interested in this is because of much lower resource consumption than either of those. I haven't tried Bluehell Firewall though. Can you comment on its performance as compared to Adblock Plus/Edge?
  - threedaymonk 12y ago
    Bluhell is touted as a lighter weight solution. I haven't taken measurements, but Firefox Mobile certainly feels snappier with Bluhell than with Adblock Plus/Edge.
    - notfoss 12y ago
      Thanks, I'll give it a try.
- silverwind 12y ago
  For system level blocking on Android, I've come to like AdAway (root required).

omegote 12y ago

With the linked tweet to that retarded definition of theft (https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632 https://twitter.com/LeaVerou/status/518154828166725632), Lea Verou has definitely become the Anita Sarkeesian of web development. She's gone full retard.

fpgaminer 12y ago

It seems like, if one were an evil web developer, one could thwart blockers like these with a few nasty tricks. Server-side: on each request of a resource, salt all linked resource URIs and encrypt (after the host name) before sending the final document to the client. The resources can still be fetched, because the server can decrypt any requests, but the client has no way of knowing whether a particular resource is an ad or not. That thwarts URI based filtering. To thwart DOM filtering, randomize element classes and ids. Though impractical, I thought it was an evil/funny idea.

Drakim 12y ago
If the resource names are still "static" your resources can still be blocked. But if they are altered slightly every time, you may also thwart caching, right?
- fpgaminer 12y ago
  Right, which is why I added the bit about salting the URIs before encryption. The salt could be per request, per session, or rotated after some period of time (say once per day). If only rotated once per day, it would still thwart ad blocking, but have less of an impact on caching. It would turn into an economic question of whether the extra ad impressions are worth the extra bandwidth.
  - wampus 12y ago
    Since most ads are effectively blocked at the domain level, I doubt your scheme would provide much bang for the buck.
    - fpgaminer 12y ago
      The idea is that the ads would be served from the original host. Combined with encrypted URIs and the ad resources become indistinguishable from content resources. Thus thwarting blocking. As others have pointed out, yes this evil trick is incompatible with existing ad networks (which use their own domains). But it wasn't my intention to put forward a viable idea. Just an interesting one (namely, ciphering URIs to prevent blocking).

Direct 12y ago

This is awesome! I recently read this ticket[1] mentioning that porting of µBlock seems to be a starting point for gorhill to port µMatrix. In my perfect world, I would be using Firefox with nothing but µMatrix, as it is right now I'm having to use Chrome with µMatrix and sadly can't get rid of µBlock until µMatrix can hide blocked frames. Still, getting closer to that perfect world! The work done by gorhill is amazing. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73 https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/issues/73

mcovey 12y ago
Check out Policeman: https://github.com/futpib/policeman https://github.com/futpib/policeman It's similar to uMatrix and is under very active development.

topdownjimmy 12y ago

> ...the inalienable right to privacy. Yes, you have a right not to visit any website you don't want to.

perlgeek 12y ago
If all websites declared all privacy violations up-front, that might be a viable solution.
- topdownjimmy 12y ago
  Turn off cookies and JavaScript.
  - TheCraiggers 12y ago
    >Turn off cookies and JavaScript. In your first comment, you seemed to be against altering the presentation of websites; you offer a binary choice: go to the site, or do not, based solely on the content. Seemingly advocating that sites should be accepted or rejected whole-cloth with no modification. Yet here, you seem to be just fine with blocking Javascript and cookies, despite the fact that both these technologies are often used as part of ad services to generate revenue. So which is it?
    - topdownjimmy 12y ago
      I'm not against altering the presentation of websites at all; I use Ghostery myself (plus Greasemonkey etc.). I just think it's dishonest to pretend that this has anything to do with rights violations.
  - debacle 12y ago
    No, silly, they want all of the content and functionality that they developers worked so hard for, they just don't want the developers to be compensated for it.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

If the author is here, please turn off the counter by default. We're blocking distracting things in our browser, we don't need another pointless distracting thing in our browser toolbar.

sergiotapia 12y ago
Counter opinion: I like the number because if there's a website working not quite right, I can easily see the number and disable uBlock to test out if that's the cause.
- DavideNL 12y ago
  Seems already configurable: -> Settings -> Show the number of blocked requests on the icon
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  But you can't, though. uBlock shows the total number of blocked items since you started Firefox. Not the number for a given page or site. Making it a basically superfluous mostly useless datapoint.
  - JeremyNT 12y ago
    This is not the behavior I observe; in my case, it shows only the number blocked on the current page. Perhaps you have encountered a bug?
    - JohnTHaller 12y ago
      After turning it off and turning it back on, it's now per-page. Odd. Still, annoying and pointless for my purposes.
  - eyko 12y ago
    On Safari and Chrome, it displays the number of filters applied on the current site. This is (super) useful. If on Firefox you're getting a global count then that's a bug (so please report it on Github). Perhaps changing the color from red to something more "off" (grey?) would help distract less.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

simon_vetter 12y ago

is this on addons.mozilla.org? I couldn't find it there.

sjwright 12y ago

Amazing work. One concern is that the EasyPrivacy‎ list -- which is in my opinion overly aggressive -- is enabled by default. Most pertinently, it entirely disables Google Analytics on every site.

Rovanion 12y ago
Does the deactivation of Google Analytics impact the user negatively?
- coldpie 12y ago
  Arguably the sites they visit will be receiving skewed analytics against their particular use-case, so the site owners won't cater to their needs as much. That said, I still block GA.
- oconnore 12y ago
  They don't get the privilege of having their data analyzed and used to market products back to them. Some of the marketing people on here will probably find that to be horrendous. Where is my relevant promoted content?!
  - sjwright 12y ago
    If most geeks end up blocking GA (in most cases without realising it) then the audience of geek-focused content might end up being severely under-reported to publishers. This will only accelerate the mainstreamification of our culture.
    - oconnore 12y ago
      You ought to be supporting publishers that are important to you with your dollars, not with HTTP requests to Google Analytics.
    - quadrangle 12y ago
      You're right. We should all start reading all our spam messages and actively buying all the products we can tolerate. Otherwise, the spam will only be for crap we don't like…

danielsamuels 12y ago

I tried this out for a couple of weeks after the "Adblock makes things slower" article came out, and I found it was blocking more stuff - but not necessarily the right stuff. I was finding that sites were breaking, stuff was disappearing and it was because of uBlock. I think I was trying to log into Medium and the Twitter and Facebook had been hidden, literally breaking the functionality of the site. That's not what I want from an adblocker.

maxerickson 12y ago
There's already a couple of threads here discussing that uBlock is using different filters by default than other adblockers. There's also a comment from the developer mentioning that the filter you mention has been turned off (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916774 ). Here's a good guideline: uBlock is not yet the right blocker for people that don't want to configure anything. It's not clear to me that it is even trying to be that thing, but it's clear enough that it isn't there yet.
meowface 12y ago
This happened to me as well, but for different sites. In the end I just had to whitelist 2 domains and I haven't run ino a problem since.
losvedir 12y ago
Well, as the README says, it's not an "adblocker" but a generic blocker. Hiding Twitter and Facebook log-in functionality on Medium is a feature not a bug for me. By including those javascripts, both companies can build up a history of the sites I visit. So I gather this is more of a privacy+ad blocker rather than strictly ad blocker.
- gorhill 12y ago
  Unfortunately, even with EasyPrivacy and "Fanboy's Social Blocking", you will find that blockers (ABP, AdBlock, uBlock, etc) do not prevent 100% connecting to Facebook, Twitter, and whatnot.[1] This is one of the reasons I see dynamic filtering as a key feature: users have the last word, not the filter lists.[2] For example, I currently block all Facebook, Twitter, Disqus, and any of similarly ubiquitous domains by default using dynamic filtering, so that I have now 100% certainty that no connections to these domains occur on any page, while such certainty is not possible when relying solely on the filter lists. [1] https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq https://www.diffchecker.com/pz6rv6lq [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-qu...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

danieltoomey 12y ago

My version of firefox (34.05 on mac) says the tool is corrupted

titolibowitz 12y ago
try installing it from here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases worked for me.

codychan 12y ago

I tried this for Chrome for a couple days and found that it really didn't block too much ads(I can say none ads were blocked) comparing to ABP.

teamhappy 12y ago

Does anybody know if I really need the "Malware domain list" if I have Chrome's malware and phishing protection activated at the same time? Sounds like they might contain the same sites anyway.

ecaron 12y ago

Personally, I hope that this doesn't get added to addons.mozilla.org. Their arbitrary human-control editor policy would be the best thing to cause stagnation of innovative plugins such as this. If the author goes the self-hosted route, automatic updates are still achievable (and can even occur faster.) +1 for not having this in AMO!

hurin 12y ago

I'm curious as to what drives the creation of this multitude of add-blocking projects? What is their income model and what supports their development?

beagle3 12y ago
The obnoxious and spying nature of ads.
- hurin 12y ago
  ... I'm not asking about why you'd want one. - I'm asking about why you'd make a new one and who would pay for your work on a new one when others already exist?
  - Kliment 12y ago
    Own itch-scratching I guess.
  - beagle3 12y ago
    But that is the same question. Not everyone is trying to maximize their wealth all the time. Do you ask "why did Linus write Linux when there were other operating systems available at the time and no one was paying him for it?" or similarly the Atheos.cx guy? Gnome when there was KDE? Gimp when there was Photoshop? Facebook when there was MySpace?
    - quadrangle 12y ago
      The last one isn't comparable to the others. The original Facebook made by that other guy Aaron Greenspan arguably was just someone doing something because it was useful. Zuckerberg and co. made what is today's Facebook specifically to gain profit and power. But your point is well-made otherwise. The answer to "why?" for uBlock and others is "because people care enough to do it."

mdellabitta 12y ago

I decided to dump extension-based privacy stuff and installed Privoxy instead. I used to have Ghostery, Disconnect, ABP, and some other things running simultaneously. When you think about it, that's a lot of JS running and iterating the DOM multiple times every time you load a page. Now there's a single, purpose-built, standalone process written in C doing it. Not going back.

notsony 12y ago
Any issues connecting to sites over SSL using Privoxy? I'm thinking mainly of banking web-sites.
- Nanzikambe 12y ago
  I've used Privoxy since late 2002 on a Linux gateway box - never had a single issue with SSL. In fact the only issue I've ever had was building it an forgetting to enable threaded mode ..
- mdellabitta 12y ago
  I don't recall any problems, but I use Foxyproxy to connect to it. In the worst case, you can just toggle it off quickly for that site, then turn it on again.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
aerique 12y ago
I used to run Privoxy for years and then came the time of AdBlock, NoScript, etc. Perhaps it is indeed time to look back again.
sdfjkl 12y ago
I've used Privoxy & friends (Glitterblocker on OS X) since the days of junkbusters.com, but with SSL on the rise this no longer works very well for me.
- 12y ago

HeXetic 12y ago

It would be nice if the link was to the top of the page, or the start of the Readme, instead of to #installation. A bit presumptuous there.

webwanderings 12y ago

Please get us uBlock for Chrome on Android and iOS.

Perceval 12y ago
I use Weblock on iOS: http://www.weblockapp.com/ http://www.weblockapp.com/
austinsharp 12y ago
I'd recommend Javelin Browser[0] on Android. [0] http://javelinbrowser.com/ http://javelinbrowser.com/

chdir 12y ago

Can someone familiar with the code explain what's the difference between this & adblock/disconnect etc. Why is this lighter? (a little technical algorithm difference would be good to know)

edwintorok 12y ago
I think uBlock only injects the CSS rules needed, not 14000+ like ABP: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52638574 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/161#issuecomment-52...

leke 12y ago

This came just in time. My Firefox was crawling with ABP. Now it's flying along again.

unethical_ban 12y ago

I like it, but so far anyway, I'm not feeling discernible differences in performance. That's just me though! I would like to see something akin to Ghostery's interface where I can see exactly what trackers/ads are hitting me at a site, and whitelist by domain.

lars_francke 12y ago

I've never had an (Ad) blocker as I'm relatively happy with most sites but there are some that are not behaving well. When I last looked (at least two years ago) there wasn't a single blocker that supports a blacklist-only mode. Meaning: Allow everything unless I block a certain domain. Does anyone have an idea if something like this exists now?

exadeci 12y ago
Well if you disable all the filters of Ublock and add your block list to the "My filters" tab that should do what you want :)
- lars_francke 12y ago
  Thanks but that's not what I'm looking for. I don't want to maintain any block lists myself. I want to use all the 3rd-party Filters available but I only want them to be active on certain spammy websites. As far as I can tell ublock doesn't let me do that either.
Tobu 12y ago
Just don't enable any filter lists. A while back you had to add them manually; now I think it's a matter of unchecking them in the first-run dialog. ABP also makes it easy to create very specific rules: only block a particular resource when accessed from the current domain.
- lars_francke 12y ago
  Thanks but that's not what I'm looking for. I want them all enabled! But I only want to enable the addon for certain blacklisted sites.

G2P 12y ago

I've been using this port instead of Adblock Plus for a few weeks. I like the low overhead, but usability is bad. - It's hard to list what filters are applied (though not impossible, if you like pain: hunt for the right icon using hovertext, find an empty page, hunt for icons again this time without hovertext; one icon will trigger something that will fill up a log, but it stalls a few seconds first and there's no progress indication). - The big green “power” icon is the wrong metaphor. IMHO uBlock should just stop using icons. - ABP has simple and obvious text menus, uBlock fails at making its features discoverable. This despite ABP being much more feature-complete. - There's no way to enable and disable filters from a page. - There's no easy way to reach uBlock preferences (though not impossible, if you click random areas of the main panel) - There's no rule editor. ABP's rule editor makes the simple cases easy and the tricky ones possible. - The element hiding picker is unusable. The ABP picker is well polished, but ABP also integrates with the Firefox developer tools. That simple feature makes it unnecessary to code a custom picker.

INTPenis 12y ago
I hear what you're saying but to me the advantage of ABP has been never having to see its preferences. I've used it for many years and I can't remember ever going into the preferences for any reason. I've said this before but being a habitual user of noscript I feel that all I really need from an adblocker is to skip those annoying youtube commercials. Everything else noscript handles pretty well. So I'll have to see if uBlock can do that for me.
- wernercd 12y ago
  You need to atleast go into the preferences to select extra lists (if you want them) and to disable whitelisted sites (also, if you want to do that since ABP enables "some" ads by default). (I'd probably enable the whitelisted stuff... IF I wasn't more concerned about adware than anything else over ad-networks)

findjashua 12y ago

ublock doesn't work on quite a few sites, whereas I've never had an issue with adblock. Couple of examples off the top of my head: 1. giphy: it removes the share and twitter buttons 2. doesn't block ads on hulu There were others as well that I seem to be forgetting (I remember having to disable it on quite a few sites). Good intention (lowering memory consumption), but the execution still has some way to go.

sprokolopolis 12y ago
Some of those share/tweet/like buttons can track you without no interaction, just by loading on the page. Removing them might be intentional for this reason.
- findjashua 12y ago
  True, but imho an ad blocker should just block ads by default. I'm not sure if I'm representative of most users, but I don't really care as much about tracking, just about ads cluttering the page.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    > an ad blocker should just block ads by default First sentence on the project page: "µBlock is not an ad blocker; it's a general-purpose blocker."
    - findjashua 12y ago
      touche!
quadrangle 12y ago
this is just different filter presets. You can change the filters. In my case, I had ABP doing all that same blocking, only I had to opt-in, whereas with ublock that blocking is opt-out.
- 12y ago

pwr22 12y ago

Is this considered stable now? Last I checked it had some problems, if fixed already that is awesome

bsder 12y ago

Does this work on any of the mobile browsers? I'd kill for something to block stuff properly on mobile.

dpifke 12y ago
I just tried and was unsuccessful at installing it on Firefox for Android. (Fails to install silently after download.) That said, Ghostery (and for that matter, HTTPS Everywhere) both work great.

tux 12y ago

Awesome exactly what I was looking for. Because AdBlock Plus is extremely slow at times. Also uBlock provides many more filters. Thank You!

dserodio 12y ago
The official XPI are here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
- tux 12y ago
  Thanks :-) Will check it out.

tux 12y ago

Installed it in Firefox 35 and Chromium 39 on Arch Linux, now browsing is noticeably faster :-) Whooohooo!

gorhill 12y ago

Well while this is being seen by many, I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate what is said in the README of the project: > Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free. Specifically, EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Fanboy Social, Malware domains, and a many more are the basis of many other blockers: Adblock Plus, AdBlock, AdGuard, BlueHell, and many others I am sure. It seems such a tedious amount of work to maintain these lists, this needs to be acknowledged -- none of the above blockers would do very well without these lists.