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The El Capitan/Safari 9 Content Blocker Thread
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You should report this to the dev. He seems responsive to this sort of thing. The list is updated dynamically, so it is easy for him to tweak it.
Hi all!
I'd like to announce a beta version of Adguard browser extension:
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension/releases/tag/2.1.0
The main change in this beta version is that now we use Content Blocker API in Safari 9+. It was hell of a work to make content blocker API work with all the filters Adguard allows to use. But now it's done and you can try it.
You can see the full changelog on github, here are the main changes:
You can get the beta version from this URL:
http://chrome.adtidy.org/app.html?app=AdguardBeta.safariextz
Important note: beta version of Adguard extension is updated from our server. In Safari 9+ such updates cannot be applied automatically, you should check "Safari" -> "Extensions" from time to time.
I'd like to announce a beta version of Adguard browser extension:
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardBrowserExtension/releases/tag/2.1.0
The main change in this beta version is that now we use Content Blocker API in Safari 9+. It was hell of a work to make content blocker API work with all the filters Adguard allows to use. But now it's done and you can try it.
You can see the full changelog on github, here are the main changes:
This is a major update with quite a few new features and some very important changes. At first we were focused at Safari and their new Content Blocker API, but while adding this new API support we have added some features that may be useful to users of any browser. Let's start.
Safari Content Blocker API #16
You may have heard that Safari has introduced a new API designed specifically for ad blockers. It works for both OS X and iOS and thanks to this API you can now use Adguard for iOS. Now it's time for big brother to use it as well. If you use Safari 9 or later, Adguard will use a new API instead of the old one. Users of Safari 7-8: please don't worry, we still support these.
New API has some pros and cons.
Pros:
* We are now able to block any web request. With an old API (due to the nature of that API) we could miss some video ads.
* It seems faster than the old API. Safari developers were focused on performance while developing that API.
Cons:
* Content Blocker rules syntax is not 100% equivalent to Adguard filters syntax. This means that a small part of our rules won't work. That's why we have added new *Adguard Safari Filter*, which single purpose is to fix the issues with missing rules.
* There is a weird limitation on the rules number. You can't use more than 50000 rules. Due to that limitation we have implemented the feature below.
An option to use "optimized" filters #68
A long time ago we have added an option (turned off by default) that allows you to send us ["ad filters usage statistics"](https://adguard.com/filter-rules-statistics.html). This statistics allows us to optimize existing filters and clean up redundant rules. But what's more important, it allowed us to use special "optimized" filters in Adguard for iOS and Android. App performance and memory usage depends on the filters size, so it is essential to use smaller filters there.
Now you can use the same optimized filters in Adguard browser extension. If you are concerned about extension performance and memory usage it is highly recommended to try this new option.
Just look at the screenshot below. One memory snapshot is done with default filters and the other with "optimized filters". The difference is astounding. With "optimized" filters memory usage is **almost 40% lower**.
Domain security check in a "private" way #50
First let me tell how that check was done in the previous versions. For check if domain is phishing or malware, Adguard sent domain name to a special web service. This is a very simple and straightforward way, but it has a serious flaw. We could see the websites you visit. Of course we didn't use or save this information, but anyway, it does not look good, eh? From now on we use a new way that does not hurt your privacy in any way.
Now, instead of sending the whole domain name:
1. Adguard calculates a 256-bit hash of the domain name.
2. Then it sends first 32 bits of that hash to a web service and gets all matching hashes in response.
3. Adguard checks if any of these hashes matches the domain hash.
As you can see, no sensitive information is being sent.
You can get the beta version from this URL:
http://chrome.adtidy.org/app.html?app=AdguardBeta.safariextz
Important note: beta version of Adguard extension is updated from our server. In Safari 9+ such updates cannot be applied automatically, you should check "Safari" -> "Extensions" from time to time.
Thanks for the post. I'm tinkering around with this a bit now and so far I'm liking what I see. All the other content blockers I have tried have either no or very limited configuration options. Yours seems to have folded in all the options of a regular extension into the content blocker API method, and that puts it ahead of the others for me anyway. Nice work.
I do have a question. I understand Apple has implemented this 50k filter limit and I read what you are doing with filter optimization to work around that. So if I enable say Easylist (60k alone) and some of the other defaults, the optimization tries to look for and eliminate dupes and also tries to pick the 50,000 best (most used?) from what might now be a total of 70-80,000 I have enabled? Have I got that right?
What if I check a bunch of these lists and turn off optimization?
I understand if you don't want to reveal too much here as I can see how some of this may be proprietary.
First of all, we always compress generic hiding rules into a smaller number of content blocker rules. So the easylist size will be not 60k, but about 36k.
Here is a detailed description of how this compression works:
http://forum.adguard.com/showthread...ature-is-Enabled&p=69267&viewfull=1#post69267
Now about filters optimization. It does not mean that optimization is done on your side. Thanks to dozens of thousands volunteers, we already know which rules are mostly used and which are almost redundant. So we compose smaller optimized filters on the server side and when you turn that option on, Adguard just switches to these "optimized" filters.
First you will see an alert about 50k limit and, I hope, you'll either turn optimized filters back on or uncheck some filters
When you hit the 50k limit, Adguard uses first 50k and ignores the rest. In fact we does not have any other option. If you try to register more than 50k rules, Safari content blocker will stop working.
Here is a detailed description of how this compression works:
http://forum.adguard.com/showthread...ature-is-Enabled&p=69267&viewfull=1#post69267
Now about filters optimization. It does not mean that optimization is done on your side. Thanks to dozens of thousands volunteers, we already know which rules are mostly used and which are almost redundant. So we compose smaller optimized filters on the server side and when you turn that option on, Adguard just switches to these "optimized" filters.
First you will see an alert about 50k limit and, I hope, you'll either turn optimized filters back on or uncheck some filters
When you hit the 50k limit, Adguard uses first 50k and ignores the rest. In fact we does not have any other option. If you try to register more than 50k rules, Safari content blocker will stop working.
Interested in knowing what you think of the blocker. I'm always looking for something new. Purify is on my iOS and wipr is on Mac OS X.
So far I can't find anything wrong at all with the Adguard extension. Like I mentioned, it is the only content blocker I have seen that provides all the configuration options like one normally sees in an regular extension like UBlock or AB/ABP.
I've actually switch over to Adguard on my iOS devices for the same reason. Much more configurable than anything else out there.
How are the speeds. Ad and trackers aren't the only thing I want from my blockers. Have you tried it on the Mac. I'm assuming it uses the new api?
Speed seems as good as Wipr was to me. Yes, I am using the new "content blocker" Safari extension mentioned in post #153 that uses the new API.
uBlock uses the old mechanism, but it has always been lauded for good performance.
The new version of adguard feels just as fast though, and seems to break fewer websites.
The new version of adguard feels just as fast though, and seems to break fewer websites.
We'll push the final release to Safari Gallery in two weeks. I don't know how long it will take for Apple to review the extension after that. Usually it takes about 3-5 days (but the last time it was 5 weeks).
I noticed the Wipr dev. mentioned on Twitter his last update took 45 days to get approved. Looks like Apple is really scrutinizing these.
Yeah, it seems that they had some issues with approving updates recently. I hope the situation will be better in january.
Anyway, I'll post a link to release safariextz file here. Release build has a special "UpdateFromGallery" property, so when new version appears in Gallery autoupdate will work for it.
I switched to AdGuard beta version posted in this thread and it works great. AdGuard allows to select and block elements manually and most other extensions posted in the first post doesn't seems to have this feature. However, AdGuard beta version does not show the blocked ad count in Safari 9.
Yep, that's a problem we can't solve by ourselves. You see, Safari does not provide any feedback mechanism so extension does not know what is blocked. That's why our "filtering log" is disabled in Safari version.
I've requested this feature back in Novemeber in webkit-help, but it seems nobody reads that mailing list.
So I have just filed a feature request in the bugzilla:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152598
Please vote for this request there if you want it to be implemented
I installed the beta 2.1.0 yesterday and immediately after I was alerted of an update to beta 2.1.1 which I accepted. Working really good. Uninstalled Wipr and adguard beta is performing just as well if not slightly better. Always had a problem with a drop-down on Amazon with Wipr which is not happening anymore with Adguard. I like having a little control over the blocking that Adguard provides that none of the other content blockers offer. Good job guys and keep it up. Thanks a lot.
I've found a slight issue with AdGuard - if there is an app running on port 3128, the UI does not allow to click on the checkbox in order to activate the field where the proxy port is set.
Guess you're talking about a desktop app?
I've filed a bug report, thank you!
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForMac/issues/42
Yes, forgot to mention that. Thanks for keeping a sharp eye.
BTW I wanted to use the "AdGuard → Support" dialog to send the bug report, however I am unable to select the message box (I can select the type of report and the subject, however can not start entering the actual message), so I will stick to the web issue tracker for now. I am very interested in AdGuard, there's only one thing (running as a daemon without the need to log on) which prevents me from dumping everything I am using for networkwide content filtering and switching to AdGuard completely. Keep up the good work!
Huh, I can't reproduce it. Which exact OS X version do you use?
Could you please tell me why do you need a daemon process? We were thinking about implementing it when we were starting OS X version development, but in the end we've chosen the current way just because we had not found enough pros for daemon.