The El Capitan/Safari 9 Content Blocker Thread

[PowerBook-G5]

With Safari 9, Apple has brought the same style content blockers available on iOS to the Mac. They can be found in the Safari Extensions Gallery.

Note: The Extensions Gallery lists both new-style content blockers and old-style JavaScript-based extensions. It is not immediately apparent which extensions make use of the new content blocking mechanism, so don’t be confused that extensions like Adblock Plus, AdBlock and Ghostery are not listed here (they still use the old mechanism, although they are working on updates to support the new mechanism).

It appears that the new blockers don't work well with YouTube. There is usually a ~7 second pause before an ad-supported video is played.

Feel free to add your findings with these blockers to this post (it's a Wiki).

(Some) New Content Blockers:

• Adamant
  • Somewhat slow.
  • Does not display YouTube advertisements, but leaves ~7 second pause with the YouTube Player black, then content plays.
  • Sometimes leaves blank space where ads were.
  • Possible issue blocking videos on sites that use google to host videos, sound is audible but video isn't ex. kissanime.com
  • Imgur album showing results with MacRumors, The Verge, and Reddit.

• Ka-Block!
  • Speedy.
  • Does not display YouTube advertisements, but leaves ~7 second pause with the YouTube Player black, then content plays.
  • Often leaves large blank spaces where ads were.
  • Imgur album showing results with MacRumors, The Verge, and Reddit.

• NoThirdParty
  • Is very speedy (if you are fine without having any media)
  • Blocks all third-party content on websites (including images)
  • Imgur album showing results with MacRumors, The Verge, and Reddit.

• Roadblock
  
  • About the same as Ka-Block! in terms of speed.
  • Does not display YouTube advertisements, but leaves ~7 second pause with the YouTube Player black, then content plays.
  • Sometimes leave blank space where ads were.
  • Imgur album showing results from MacRumors, The Verge, and Reddit.

• Wipr
  • Speedy.
  • Does not display YouTube advertisements, but leaves ~7 second pause with the YouTube Player black, then content plays.
  • Best in terms of blocking advertisements and filling space.
  • Imgur album showing results from MacRumors, The Verge, and Reddit.

 

[gmanist1000]

Any benefit of using a new Safari extension versus just continue using AdBlock Plus?

 

[pickaxe]

Any benefit of using a new Safari extension versus just continue using AdBlock Plus?

No, but don't use AdBlock Plus, use uBlock. It's significantly faster and more efficient.

 

[Warbrain]

Just installed Wipr. I wish these had a little bit more robust options for settings.

 

[gmanist1000]

No, but don't use AdBlock Plus, use uBlock. It's significantly faster and more efficient.

Hmm never heard of that, I'll take a look.

 

[eutexian]

fwiw since i installed El Capitan, if i restart the computer the extension (ABP) is removed completely.

 

[Warbrain]

fwiw since i installed El Capitan, if i restart the computer the extension (ABP) is removed completely.

Sounds like they didn't pay to keep their extension around.

There are two different uBlocks, one that is maintained by the same developer behind Purify and there's uBlock Origin that's sometimes maintained by the original developer but doesn't support Safari.

 

[Warbrain]

Wipr does produce a noticeable speed increase over uBlock.

 

[Warbrain]

Wipr has started producing issues with YouTube videos today. If there's an ad it won't even load the video.

Same issue is happening with Ka-Block!

 

[Tourgott]

Adamant slow? A guy on reddit did a speed comparison:

Blocker Mean load time
Default 16.52 seconds
uBlock 1.93 seconds
AdBlock 2.48 seconds
Adamant 1.59 seconds

 

[Wheelie4]

Adamant slow? A guy on reddit did a speed comparison:

Blocker Mean load time
Default 16.52 seconds
uBlock 1.93 seconds
AdBlock 2.48 seconds
Adamant 1.59 seconds

I think he was comparing Adament to the other content blockers he listed along with it. Not the old adblock extensions.

 

[Weaselboy]

Wipr does produce a noticeable speed increase over uBlock.

I use uBlock and played around with some of these new content blockers a little yesterday, and went back to uBlock. My problem with them is there are no configuration options at all to control what is blocked and I have no idea what criteria they are using to block. I suspect they are just taking something like EasyList and popping it into the json download.

I like to whitelist most sites I frequent, or on some sites I just block the most annoying ads. With the content blockers it is either all or nothing it seems.

I noticed with Wipr it broke some of the functionality of MacRumors forums. With Wipr on it breaks the quote of text selection feature in my screenshot.

 

[geesus]

Where can I find uBlock? Is it not a Safari extension in the same manner as Adblock?

Edit - Doh, found it. Seems slower to me than Adblock, in that pages blank before loading. Odd.

 

[KALLT]

I noticed with Wipr it broke some of the functionality of MacRumors forums. With Wipr on it breaks the quote of text selection feature in my screenshot.

Works fine for me. I do notice that content blockers may persist sometimes even after deleting the extension. Be sure to close Safari entirely just to be sure.

 

[Che Castro]

right now I'm using ublock, but I'm going to wait for purify same content blocker from iOS to come to safari mac ,the dev said it was coming

 

[Bbeelzebub]

I was going to try one of the new content blockers, I hear Wipr is good. When I go to install, there is no install option. After some digging, I noticed there are two sites: Safari-extensions.apple.com and extensions.apple.com. One hosts installable files like uBlock, Shutup, etc. plugins that I normally use. The other has all the new content blockers and a lot of other stuff, but none have the install now features. They just link to the developers websites.

Is this normal? I was going to install one of the blockers, but I want it to automatically update for me and I don't think it will do that if I install from the developers page.

 

[Verloc]

I was going to try one of the new content blockers, I hear Wipr is good. When I go to install, there is no install option. After some digging, I noticed there are two sites: Safari-extensions.apple.com and extensions.apple.com. One hosts installable files like uBlock, Shutup, etc. plugins that I normally use. The other has all the new content blockers and a lot of other stuff, but none have the install now features. They just link to the developers websites.

Is this normal? I was going to install one of the blockers, but I want it to automatically update for me and I don't think it will do that if I install from the developers page.

https://safari-extensions.apple.com/?category=mostrecent

Just click "Install Now"

 

[ABC5S]

Adamant slow? A guy on reddit did a speed comparison:

Blocker Mean load time
Default 16.52 seconds
uBlock 1.93 seconds
AdBlock 2.48 seconds
Adamant 1.59 seconds

Had uBlock on, and it was definitely a bit slower than AdBlock, so I'll keep it unless something better comes along

 

[Fabian90]

Am I blind? I can't see any button to install ANY extension? Did a clean install of El Capitan yesterday and didn't install much yet... Is this some bug?

 

[Wheelie4]

Try clearing your cache and cookies.

 

[KALLT]

@Fabian90: The link doesn’t appear when the website detects an incompatible browser. Maybe you have switched the user agent?

 

[Fabian90]

I did a clean install of El Capitan yesterday and did not install anything relevant except uBlock. Which I deleted afterwards, restarted Safari and cleared the cache. Weird...

 

[Bbeelzebub]

https://safari-extensions.apple.com/?category=mostrecent

Just click "Install Now"

Nope, no Install Now for me. Even after a clean install. I can only download extensions from the extensions.apple.com site, not this one. The content on the two is different too. If I search for uBlock on one, it isn't on the other for example.


I have also cleared cookies, wiped cache and changed user agent string to force Safari 9.0 over default. Nothing is working. :shrug:

For comparison:

Vs:

 

[KALLT]

@Bbeelzebub: Can you try this user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.5

Maybe the Gallery is not working for the release version of Safari 9.0.

Also, if you’re familiar with the Web Inspector: can you right-click on a description of an extension in the Gallery, choose “Inspect Element” and then choose the Elements tab? You should see something like this below. I am curious whether the code is actually there or not.

 

[Bbeelzebub]

@Bbeelzebub: Can you try this user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.5

View attachment 589703

Tried that, didn't change anything.


Here are the results from the element tab: