Add blocker for Safari in Big Sur?

[Kraizelburg]

Hi all, I would like to know any good add blocker for safari in big sur. I currently have brave and safari, brave blocker is quite good but I can't find any good blocker for safari that is not very intrusive with the system, I am not a fan of content blockers that install apps.

Is there any chance to get a clean ad blocker just like the one within brave browser?

Thanks

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Since upgrading to Big sur earlier this fall (I've been on the beta track), I've been experimenting with how little I need for my ad blocking needs, and I've come down to just 2 things:

1) The new privacy mode - to get rid of trackers - in Safari 14, by enabling "Prevent cross-site tracking". (Blocking trackers often disable ads)
2) Combined this with "DuckDuckGo Privacy Protection" extension (I do not need the "DuckDuckGo Privacy Dashboard")

That gets rid of enough stuff for me, and are quite "unintrusive".

 

[Stephen.R]

I am not a fan of content blockers that install apps

Can you expand on why?

 

[Stephen.R]

very intrusive with the system

Can you explain what you mean by this?

 

[Kraizelburg]

Can you explain what you mean by this?

Sorry, what I mean by that is that in order to install some ad blockers in catalina I had to install an app that was always running in the background i.e. adguard and I don't like that.

In brave or firefox I can just install UBlock Origin as browser extension and it just work no need to other software running in the background.

 

[Kraizelburg]

Since upgrading to Big sur earlier this fall (I've been on the beta track), I've been experimenting with how little I need for my ad blocking needs, and I've come down to just 2 things:

1) The new privacy mode - to get rid of trackers - in Safari 14, by enabling "Prevent cross-site tracking". (Blocking trackers often disable ads)
2) Combined this with "DuckDuckGo Privacy Protection" extension (I do not need the "DuckDuckGo Privacy Dashboard")

That gets rid of enough stuff for me, and are quite "unintrusive".

I totally agree with you regarding privacy like getting rid of trackers, etc but ads in some web sites are quite annoying, specially in news websites which I visit often, also some tech websites are also quite heavy in ads.

What I do now is whenever I am on the go I use brave which has a built in ad blocker which works perfectly fine and when I am at home I re route my web traffic through my raspberry pi server which has pihole.

But I would like to use safari more often that's why I asked.

Cheers

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I totally agree with you regarding privacy like getting rid of trackers, etc but ads in some web sites are quite annoying, specially in news websites which I visit often, also some tech websites are also quite heavy in ads.

What I do now is whenever I am on the go I use brave which has a built in ad blocker which works perfectly fine and when I am at home I re route my web traffic through my raspberry pi server which has pihole.

But I would like to use safari more often that's why I asked.

Cheers

Oh, my approach is not just because of privacy, it'd mainly to get rid of ads, and the "my" combo works very well for that, too...

 

[Kraizelburg]

Oh, my approach is not just because of privacy, it'd mainly to get rid of ads, and the "my" combo works very well for that, too...

but does the new safari block adds by default? I wasn't aware of that, I know it block trackers now but I didn't know about adds.

 

[retta283]

Oh, my approach is not just because of privacy, it'd mainly to get rid of ads, and the "my" combo works very well for that, too...

Have you been successful in eliminating pop-up windows at particularly bad sites with this combo? That's the one that really drives me crazy, when a site opens up a bunch of other windows I have to dig to close.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

but does the new safari block adds by default? I wasn't aware of that, I know it block trackers now but I didn't know about adds.

No, but by blocking the trackers that serve the ads (and adding the DuckDuckGo Privacy Protection), I'm not getting any (noticeable) ads.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Have you been successful in eliminating pop-up windows at particularly bad sites with this combo? That's the one that really drives me crazy, when a site opens up a bunch of other windows I have to dig to close.

Not that I've noticed, do you have any examples?

Edit: Only "annoyance" I experience (regularly) is the pop-out "recommended video" on Creative Bloq, that pops out when you scroll past it, like on https://www.creativebloq.com/macos-big-sur-out-now

 

[retta283]

Not that I've noticed, do you have any examples?

The example that I can think of off the top of my head is Mediafire downloads, usually when I find a Mediafire download link and I try to download it, it opens up another window or two and hides it behind the main window. A lot of download sites do this to me (no illegal activity, just basic download sites). Examples of what the windows contain would usually be a fake Flash update notice, Mac update notice, virus warnings, or sometimes a crazy news story that may or may not be real.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

The example that I can think of off the top of my head is Mediafire downloads, usually when I find a Mediafire download link and I try to download it, it opens up another window or two and hides it behind the main window. A lot of download sites do this to me (no illegal activity, just basic download sites). Examples of what the windows contain would usually be a fake Flash update notice, Mac update notice, virus warnings, or sometimes a crazy news story that may or may not be real.

Haven't tried Mediafire, but find it odd that you get popup ads there, since they actually tout being ad-free:



You sure there's not a sinister sender and/or some (other) extensions playing a role...?

 

[retta283]

Haven't tried Mediafire, but find it odd that you get popup ads there, since they actually tout being ad-free:

View attachment 1667645

You sure there's not a sinister sender and/or some (other) extensions playing a role...?

It is possible that there is something else involved, but this is the page that I always get ads from:

This time when I clicked download it came up with a Flash out of date message from one of the windows, but it opened in a new tab instead of a window. It could be that what you were seeing has to do with the paid version of Mediafire, when I clicked on their plans I saw that the Basic plan says ad-supported downloads.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Just tested by uploading a screen shot to Media Fire and tried opening and downloading that from a new icognito window, the file showed as expected and the download button opened the download page (like yours) as expected.

Notice any differences?

 

[Stephen.R]

Sorry, what I mean by that is that in order to install some ad blockers in catalina I had to install an app that was always running in the background i.e. adguard and I don't like that.

In brave or firefox I can just install UBlock Origin as browser extension and it just work no need to other software running in the background.

Right, I dont know about adguard specifically, but I agree that's a kind of crappy solution.

However I think that poor experience has given you a misconception about the vast majority of native safari content blockers: things like 1Blocker and Ka-Block are distributed as an App via the Mac App Store (because they have to be, to provide a Safari extension) but the app itself is only used to change ad blocking preferences - it doesn't run in the background.

Unfortunately its hard to sort these legitimate Content Blocker ones (i.e. where it's Safari's native content blocking doing the work, the 3rd party app just gives it a list of things to block) from the crap ones like you described, as they all seem to include the phrase "content blocker" in their description.

I can personally attest to the functionality of 1Blocker - I've used it on multiple Macs and my iPhone since content blocking first came to Safari (around 5 years ago: https://webkit.org/blog/3476/content-blockers-first-look/), but the whole point of Safari Content Blockers is that the 3rd party app doesn't need to be running for content blocking to work.

 

[retta283]

Just tested by uploading a screen shot to Media Fire and tried opening and downloading that from a new icognito window, the file showed as expected and the download button opened the download page (like yours) as expected.

Notice any differences?

View attachment 1667674

Much better, thanks for testing that out. I do think that blocking the trackers might be enough for most annoyances on the web, so I may just start doing that with Big Sur and my fresh browser profile.