Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The El Capitan/Safari 9 Content Blocker Thread
- Thread starter PowerBook-G5
- WikiPost WikiPost
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
For lists that aren't there, you have to find a clickable ABP formatted link such as the ones on Fanboy and those will add to your custom filters. Additionally, you can import them in after exporting them out on uBlock. Unfortunately, lists won't import in as they don't export out on uBlock. They will have had to come from the custom filers section of uBlock.
I haven't tried, but I imagine if you want a specific list that isn't offered by adguard, just go to the url with the filter rules, copy/paste that into uBlock's custom section, export to file. Then import it into AdGuard. (Way more effort than I did.)
I just found the lists I always use, if they weren't there, found clickable adds online for them. Then imported custom rules that block Google+, FB, Twitter, Disqus, etc. or any other service where I may be subjected to unintelligent people on the internet in comment sections.
Last edited:
It's the old format. The new content blocker API only allows XXX amount of rules and they are predetermined by the developers. Until that changes or the blockers allow for custom settings, they just won't be as effective or personalized for many. Better than nothing, but the old ones are still offering more flexibility.
Hopefully it's temporary, as I see the IOS content blockers are starting to get differentiating features. It just hasn't carried over to OS X yet.
We are working on a new version of the Safari extension which uses Content Blocking API:
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension/issues/16
In fact that task is closed now, so beta will be available in the end of this week.
Frankly, we are not satisfied with that API at all. We have to remove some functions from the extension because of this.
Current problems:
1. It is slow (despite what webkit devs are telling). Why inventing a bicycle instead of looking at existing ad blockers code?
2. Current rules syntax is not "flexible" enough. We can convert only part of filter rules to that new syntax (ok, it's the most part, but anyway).
3. There are lots of restrictions. For instance you can't register more than 50k rules per content blocker. Why? Why 50k? Single EasyList contains about 50k filters.
Ok, we have handled it for iOS by compressing filters, we have done the same for OS X, but anyway, that restriction does not make any sense.
4. It is impossible to "debug" your content blocker. You can't detect which rule has been triggered or which request has been blocked. So creating new filters for Safari or fixing incorrectly blocked content is quite annoying.
Last edited:
Definitely looking forward to this. If your extension allows for the blocking of Youtube commercials without a delay, it will already be 10000x better than any of the others.
I'll post here a link when some working dev build is ready.
This youtube delay issue is not much of a problem for OS X extension.
But I don't yet know how to fix it for mobile content blocker as there is not much we can do in iOS. Looks like a Safari bug to me, blocked Ajax requests are disappearing which is completely unexpected by the webpage. I should find some time and file a bug report on this issue.
@Bbeelzebub here you are, the dev build:
https://cdn.adguard.com/public/Temp/AdguardDev-2.0.21.safariextz
Do not turn on more than 6 or 7 filters, this build does not use compressed filters yet so it will simply (and silently) trim the rules set to 50k if you have too many.
https://cdn.adguard.com/public/Temp/AdguardDev-2.0.21.safariextz
Do not turn on more than 6 or 7 filters, this build does not use compressed filters yet so it will simply (and silently) trim the rules set to 50k if you have too many.
I'm interested in trying this too. I'm using Adamant and I'm not satisfied with it at all. It breaks some pop-ups that are not ads, like login windows for certain sites.
Just keep in mind that the version I've posted here is more like a nightly build, not official beta yet.
There is one known major issue: it does not register content blocker on browser startup. So if you restart Safari you need to poke AG (go to settings and turn some filter off and on again).
There is one known major issue: it does not register content blocker on browser startup. So if you restart Safari you need to poke AG (go to settings and turn some filter off and on again).
I'm using Wipr with the YouTube Center YouTube extension and never see a YT ad and the videos start right away.
Yep, Alex has closed the bugs causing that delay issue:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=146706
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151649
So do we have any speed tests for the new content blockers? Which ones are the fastest or best? How much faster are they compared to AdBlock/AdBlock+ on OS X?
It's not right to compare them. ABP uses some huge filters like EasyList and EasyPrivacy while the new content blockers simply cannot use so huge filters because of ridiculous 50k filters limitation (the single EasyList has 51k rules!). So most of them uses some small subsets of EasyList/EasyPrivacy and who knowns which rules are missing.
Ok, let's check an example.
To fully load page A browser makes 100 requests.
Blocker #1 has comprehensive filters and blocks 50 requests. But it adds an overhead of 10ms to each request (total overhead is 1000ms).
Blocker #2 has smaller filters and blocks 25 requests. It adds an overhead of 1ms to each request (total overhead is 100ms).
In which case page is loaded faster?
The answer is: it depends your connection speed and on the website speed.
Awww now don't make me maths this early!
I get what you are saying it is a bit of an unfair comparison, but I still think there is some value in making the comparison nonetheless. For me anyway, the content blocker method is providing faster page loads on most sites at the small expense of seeing a few more Twitter/FaceBook/Reddit social buttons scattered around.
Is the Adguard extension for OS X limited to 50k filter rules? What about iOS?
The current stable version - no, it uses the old API, not content blocker.
The new one (which will go to beta testing stage on monday) - sure, it is limited.
What we do to overcome this:
1. Filters are compressed
2. By default OS X extension uses "optimized" filter lists (the same as iOS app uses). These "optimized" filters do not contain redundant (or rarely used) rules.
How do we do this? If you use Adguard browser extension, there's an option to "Send ad filters stats" (off by default).
There're lots of users who turned it on so with their help we have smaller/optimized filters.
Anyway duplicate rules are ignored.
Generally default lists are good enough. Also there're some special lists you may be interested.
Fanboy's Social Blocking List
Fanboy's Social Blocking List solely removes Social Media content on web pages such as the Facebook like button and other widgets.
This filter is like our Social filter, but it removes more. We normally remove only widgets (like, +1 buttons, group widgets and such), while this filter also removes links to social profiles.
Fanboy's Annoyance List
Fanboy's Annoyance List blocks Social Media content, in-page pop-ups and other annoyances; thereby substantially decreasing web page loading times and uncluttering them. Fanboy's Social Blocking List is already included, there is no need to subscribe to it if you have you already have Fanboy's Annoyance List. It also removes EU cookies alerts and such.
Prebake
Blocks EU cookie law notices.
EasyPrivacy
Fanboy's Enhanced Tracking List
These two filters also block tracking and such. These are very good and comprehensive filters, but using them increases chance of incorrect blocking or breaking some pages load.